I’m the one on the right.

This is about an hour from Chiang Rai, way up north in Thailand, in the Golden Triangle. Yes, that Golden Triangle. In fact, the Museum of Opium was across the street from the Anantara Resort where we stayed, but it was closed. I really wanted to see it.

The resort maintains a very cool, humane “elephant camp,” where about 30 elephants reside. Guests can ride them and all that, but the animals live in the jungle and are tended to by their mahouts, the guys seen riding on top as their charges wade into the Mekong River to bathe. The elephants seem very tame, comfortable around humans (more so, I’m sure, than the other way around), eating from our hands and spraying us with water on command. I think I heard them laughing, too. An Australian couple at the resort just came down from China where they also have elephant parks, but they described the conditions there as awful. These guys looked to be having a pretty good time of it.

If anyone is interested, learn more at www.helpingelephants.org