AND BUT: then we round the corner, thick trees on either side, and Doc slams the jeep to a halt. The jungle is screeching. Ahead, there are three 4WDs in front of us, sitting idly. A face pops out of a window of the car in front.
"Chang moho!" he cries, waving his hands frantically at us.
And now Doc slams the car into reverse and starts backing up the road - the only road out of the jungle - at a fair speed. There are cars behind us. Doc leans out the window and yells.
"Chang moho! Bpai! Chang moho!"
Finally, he turns to us to explain.
"There is an elephant coming." He raises his eyebrows meaningfully. "An angry elephant. When people beep beep - [he motions beeping the horn] - elephant does this - [he motions the elephant crushing the car and murderously chasing down and slaughtering those who crawl, bloodied and screaming, from the vehicle]".
"Oh" we say in unison.
He nods at us. We have been hitchhiking with Doc for the last hour. "Safety first," he says, pushing the car further up the road, and lifts a handgun onto his lap - unbeknownst to Edie and I, but seen by Aaron, who thereafter has the distinct look of a man who knows his body will never be found by the authorities.
At that moment a soldier dressed in dark fatigues comes pelting round the corner like the vanguard of a horde of Japanese people fleeing Godzilla. He jumps onto the back of a truck, screams for it to go faster.
But we can't go faster. The cars behind us are trying to turn around, rather than reverse any further, and now everybody's stuck for a few minutes while the blockage clears. And now, round the corner, the great bull elephant lumbers. He's a fantastic beast, with magnificent tusks, and he looks stressed and frightened. The road's designed to keep the wildlife off it; but once they're on it, it's very difficult to exit because of the side trenches. So he keeps marching toward us and we stumble backwards, each car trying not to collide with the next.
This surreal chase, which lasts for another fifteen kilometres before a ranger's truck finally forces the elephant from the road, reaches its peak when we are all not only being chased up the road by a wild elephant but also trapped in our cars by a troop of about fifty large red-assed monkeys, who surround the cars and seem playful from the window but screech and bare their teeth as soon as a door is opened.
Mental. But really the incident saved the weekend, which at that point was seeming like a bit of a blowout. See, we had a great time at Khao Yai jungle last time, all trekking and waterfalls and watching monkeys swing through trees and so on. So we decided we'd come one last time before we leave the area, forgetting one key factor: the wet season.
Yes, after all my bitching the wet season began in force a couple of weeks ago. At school I had to wade through shin-deep water; the road outside looked like a river filled with a thousand Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bangs. It entailed all the wading and gnashing of teeth that I'd thought it would. The temperature has even got significantly cooler. It's great.
Until you get to the jungle. It was raining lightly, and cold up in the mountains, and so the waterfalls were a write-off. As for the trekking - well, most of the tracks were closed because of flooding, especially the longer ones. So we decided to join together a couple of the shorter ones, get a good walk in, and head back to town.
We got ten metres down the track, when I heard Edie's voice behind me. "What's that on the ground?" she asked, ominously. Twenty more metres, and Aaron pipes in, "Is that a leech on my foot?", and then, the call from Edie after another twenty metres "They're everywhere!".
We picked up the pace.
Actually, we ran the entire way. There was literally a carpet of leeches on the ground, thousands upon thousands of the little bastards waving their little tooth-filled heads at us mockingly. Luckily we were on the shortest track, a 1200m circular 'Nature Trail' so that we were back at the visitor centre inside of twenty minutes. By that stage, we each had at least a dozen leeches on each of our shoes, with more of the little fucking creatures burrowed inside our socks and ankles. I'd never seen anything like it. The lighters came out in force and at one point we accidentally set Aaron's shoe on fire. For whatever reason Edie got away unscathed, but Aaron and I marched around the rest of the day looking as if someone had gone at our ankles with a hacksaw.
So the rampaging bull elephant really was an improvement on our day. Even better: the handgun-wielding air-duct installation man we were hitchhiking with offered to take us out to dinner with his friends. We agreed - they couldn't speak much English and we couldn't speak much Thai but several bottles of whisky saw a rapid end to those concerns. We garbled our own languages, let alone the other, and spent most of the night making extravagant gestures with our hands. It was a fantastic night, and we ended it back in Bangkok on a high.
I should mention that Edie has become something of a whisky monster over here. The fact that you can buy a bottle of the meanest whisky in Thailand (Mehkong), plus soda, cola and ice for around $4 altogether (to paraphrase that stupid song nobody knows the name of: Ain't no party like a $4 party!) has released something bestial and broken-beer-bottle-wielding in Edie. Or maybe she just likes it alot. In any case, if you're mixing the drinks, better make sure you get the proportions exactly right - and DO NOT forget to give a last little 'jush' with the spoon to mix it up. Otherwise you might just get a broken glass to the face, followed by a shouted, "Shhhhhh!! Stop crying!!! [hiccup] Whaddayya say we don't [hiccup] tell the cops about this, hey? How about we jus...Zzzzzzzzzzz"
Two weeks-ish til we leave this accursed city, though I finished work last week. Still, I've found that life in Bangkok is vastly improved by a) not working and b) locking yourself in the apartment and playing Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" at full volume on repeat all day even if you're supposed to, like, maybe, do the dishes or take out the rubbish or something. But whatever, don't be a, like, fascist. I'll do it this afternoon! Jesus! Lay off!
Lachie
