Our Elephant Mahout Experience
I love elephants. I love elephants so much that the first thing I wanted to do upon arriving in Luang Prabang was to arrange an elephant experience - specifically by doing a mahout course. A mahout is an elephant “driver”/trainer. In Laos and many parts of Asia, this means that the mahout owns the elephant and depends on it for his livelihood.
The elephant experience in Thailand proved to be a little out of our price range, however, as with most things in Laos, it looked to be much more within the backpacker budget. To say I was very keen to do this was a massive understatement.
Keeping along the Laos theme, picking the right company out of a myriad of reputable and dodgy operators was a conundrum. Do we go with the higher priced, flashier looking tours or the budget options with brochures photocopied on a Xerox e. Eco-tourism considerations also make it more complicated, as you want to choose an operator that treats the elephants well and looks after them properly. Choices, choices....
In the end, we went with one only a little bit cheaper that gave good assurances as to the treatment and condition of their elephants with pictures of decent looking accommodation. The promise of a significant amount of elephant interaction made it a winner
We were picked up early in the morning from the booking office, and initially taken to the elephant center for a welcome talk and our mahout class, mainly of learning "elephantese" - commands that would help us control the elephant. (I’ve since forgotten all but my favorite – boon boon. We’ll see that in action later.)
After our class, we were taken to our accommodation to change into our "mahout suits" and meet the animals.
Crossing the river to the cabins
Wow, these monks are so young.
On shore, we were shown to our cabins, given a little time to settle in & have a look around. Then we had to change into our “outfits”.
The cabin that we stayed in
The cabins were charming. Love the mozzie net look! I reckon that it’s probably more about function here, but I still think it looks cool.
Shower & toilet au naturale (luckily with only one, very dead, uninvited guest)
The dining hall
This reminded me of “The Ring”. Freaky!
And the most exciting part of the day begins…. to the elephants!
Our trendy Mahout suits (which none of the mahouts wear…) Proof that clothes too big for you does not equal slimming. Maybe they had leftover denim from some Diesel knockoffs shop in a nearby town?
Our team for the day. We were sharing it with a couple of Germans, brother and sister, that were just there for the day. That means we were the only ones staying in the cabins. Gonna be a bit quiet night in camp!
We all walked about 10 minutes to the training center, where we would learn a little bit about the elephants and the commands they are taught. The idea is that we would “drive” them on their own. We learned our 5 commands and were off to try to try to steer these massive animals through the jungle, or so we thought.
Love those ears!!
What a cute baby!
Is this our ride?
Love elephant bums!
The Germans heading out first
Is our elephant trying to drink the other one’s pee?
Walking through the quiet little village (ie only 1 or 2 families) to get to where the elephants were kept again for an afternoon walk & feed.
Ready to ride…
Getting onto him this way was a little harder and scarier than I expected!
While it seemed like a fun idea to take the baby for a walk with us…
...the little shit insisted on walking right between his Daddy’s front legs! I was getting pretty worried that Daddy (my elephant) was going to go down hard with me on top.
When we got to the river for the bath, we found out why the 
baby had come along…. they had double-booked one of the elephants. Another tourist (see inset) had booked for a jungle walk with the mother and baby, so Kyle lost his elephant in the process. Not happy about that as he wasn’t going to get to participate in the bath time. 
We knew that we were taking them to the river for a bath, but never really thought about the detail involved. Now, this was one of my favorite parts of the entire trip, so I wasn’t shy about adding photos. I loved the elephants!!! 
When they go in for a bath, you go in for a bath.
And apparently bathtime equals poo time. I didn’t expect all the poo floating around, bumping into my legs!
The mahouts were the smart ones standing on the elephants’ backs to keep from getting wet.
That was the best fun!
Considering we had paid a fair amount for this experience in comparison to our tight budget, we were definitely disappointed that Kyle didn’t get to experience bathtime. Not to be pains in the arse, but we weren’t going to let it go. We probably didn’t do much for American/Australian – Laotian relations, but Kyle got what he paid for. And I got a second bathtime.
Kyle getting his fair go. Have a look at the guide’s face though! He doesn’t look impressed. If we had seen that at the time, we would have been more concerned that he was going to try to drown us when we got to the river.
My new elephant loved to do “Boon Boon” – make a big splash with its trunk.
Still doing Boon Boon… Gotta a cheeky one on my hands!
Gotta get behind the ears!
A 10/10 from the American judge for the elegant dismount.
Our guide who was probably quite pissed off about us insisting on another ride, but my mahout didn’t seem to mind much.
I sincerely hope we remembered to tip them, because we did have a really fun time in the end. And getting to go back on our own was that much better!
Saying goodbye to our new friends
The last morning, we walked to pick up the elephants and bring them back to the camp. We got to have a little pat and feed them as well.
Trying to hide from the sun
The staff carrying in breaky for the elephants.
This little one really is cheeky. Here he is trying to make a getaway.
Lil poser
In need of a good pedicure after all that walking
Time for breaky
Feeding the boys some bananas
Woh. That’s rude….
Do those look like waves goodbye to you?
Boating & Kayaking
After our time with the elephants, we got into a boat with an Aussie and 2 Botswanans, headed up river to see the famed Pad Sae waterfall.
Cool butterflies along the river
Elephants on the riverside taking a bath
Apparently this little hut was the entrance to the waterfalls...
We were a bit annoyed at first to discover that our entrance fee to the area wasn’t included in the tour but we got over it when we saw the place. How stunning!
We had some of the packed lunch that they brought for us then quickly hopped into the water. The bottom of the wading pool was deceptively slippery, hence Kyle's tentative walk into the pool.
What a beautiful place for an after lunch swim!
After our swim, it was back in the boat to a half way point on the river where we were going to kayak the rest of the way to camp!
The kayaking conisisted of some leisurely paddling downstream - all in all pretty relaxing. I'm pretty sure the life jackets had "Mattel" printed on one side and "Not to be used as a Life Saving Device on the other" - they were so thin, they wouldn't have kept a small child afloat. The girl from Botswana was particularly brave considering she couldn’t swim!
“What do you mean that I’m not paddling hard enough?”
After we got back to the Elephant Lodge, we met a couple more of the baby elephants before we headed back on the bus to Luang Prabang.
It was truly a magnificent experience and a unique chance to see these beautiful creatures up close and personal in a way that would not be possible back in Australia or the US. It's amazing that these massive creatures have such a gentle nature and it's so sad to think that their populations in the wild are slowly getting smaller and smaller.
Hopefully all the efforts that are being made today to preserve the elephants' habitat will start to turn around the decline of these creatures' numbers in the wild.
