The End of the Trail, Part One

After a week in Bangkok, I was home. I walked back into the Jungle Adventure Tour Company compound, where I was greeted by some tanned white kid with a ponytail. He was wearing khaki cargo pants and real hiking boots. He said his name was Jim and he was going to be my tour guide.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you here to take the tour?” he asked in that particularly nice Mid-Western way.

“Yeah, well, not exact… I mean, I lead the tours. I’m the guide.”

“Oh, you’re Phil! Tom and Maow told me all about you! I’m Jim. The new guy.”

What was he talking about? I’d only been working here two months – I was the new guy.

“Sooooo, Jim. When did you start?”

“Well, I just came here to take the tour a couple of days ago, and next thing you know, they offer me a job. Incredible, huh.? I still can’t believe it!”

“Yeah… Can you excuse me a minute? Tom? Tom!”

I found Tom on his front porch cutting his toenails with a Swiss Army Knife. “Oh, you met Jim? Great guy, huh? Good guide, too. Already took a group out all by himself. No problems at all.”

I knew he was referring to my getting lost on my first solo trek. I wondered if Buddhists were supposed to give little digs like that. What was the karmic value of a dig?

“So, who is he? What’s his story?”

“I don’t know, he comes from Arizona or something. Some kind of naturalist, too. Knows the names of all the tree and animals.”

Tom slid the plastic toothpick out of the knife handle. He cleaned under and around his toenails. Very thorough. He glanced up at me, “Don’t worry, he’s not your replacement.”

I walked to my room to unpack, kicking rocks out of my way and muttering, “New guy? Coming into my jungle? I’m the Jungle Guide here. No fresh-faced punk in water-wicking wool socks is going to take my place. We’ll just see about this...”

To be continued…

XIX. Thai Water Nymphs

We were forced to stop. The bus was under attack from all sides. Hundreds of Thai Nationals had taken to the streets, armed with high-powered squirt rifles, hoses and buckets, soaking everything in that got in their way. Songkran, the Thai Water Festival, hit and it hit hard. Everybody was drenching and getting drenched. On the sidewalks, in the alleys, taking up the entire main road – nothing could get through. I was heading back to the jungle from a visa run. I took the early morning bus, thinking I might make it home before the waterfight started. The bus hadn’t left early enough and now we were stuck in some small town on the way.

I watched the festivities through sheets of water pouring down my window. I had to get out there. As I ran down the aisle, the driver got in my way. “No, no, is too dangerous!” he cried. (Every Thai in the tourism industry feels compelled to protect foreigners.)

“It’s only water!"

I got off the bus (they’re also very easily swayed). Within seconds I was soaked. I tore off my t-shirt and as soon as they saw my abundantly hairy, white body, every Thai in town stopped shooting each other and screamed what I believe to be, “Get the monkey!”

They hit me with every hose, bucket and rifle, pummeling from every direction. During small pauses in the pummeling, children would run up and squirt me in the groin with their tiny guns, then run away. I ran to a storefront for cover, or at least where I wouldn’t be exposed on all sides. An old laughing shopkeeper handed me a hose. I shot back, but it was no defense against such an onslaught. I dropped the hose and ran next door to a beauty salon, which, as it turns out, happened to be filled with young, dripping wet girls. My half-naked hairy body proved absolutely irresistible to these girls, who probably never got a chance to touch a body quite like mine. These were “nice” Thai girls, after all. But it was Songkran and this was their chance. They surrounded me, some carrying small basins. They bowed politely, asked permission, then gently poured some water over my head. (This is the traditional Songkran way – over the years the festival has evolved from polite, quasi-religious dowsing to full-scale war.) Other girls carried tins of perfumed powder, which they mixed with water, making a thick, sweet-smelling, white paste. They circled in on me and rubbed it all over my body. In seconds, I looked like I’d been covered in plaster; my chest (and back and shoulder) hair formed endless clumps of tiny, pasty dreadlocks. I was the White Aboriginal Rasta Monkey King.

The girls dropped their basins and tins and pressed in tight all around me. We giggled, they massaged. They didn’t even mind getting their fingers caught in my dreads. I died and went to heaven. Then, as if the hand of God had come to let me know I was having too much fun, a small truck drove by with an oil drum full of ice-cold water, which was dumped all over us. It cooled our passion but only temporarily – one of the girls grabbed me with a wild look in her eye.

“You kiss me now!”

Hmmm, I thought, cute Thai girl in cold, clingy, wet clothes wants to kiss me. Hmmm…

As I leaned in, she lifted her hand up to her mouth. She placed her thumb to her lips and extended her pinky towards my mouth. Her friends told me I had to kiss the pinky. Only the pinky. I protested, but they were not easily swayed, not being in the tourism industry. Even in the throes of this sodden bacchanalia, they were nice girls. I kissed her pinky, then all the other girls extended theirs. So I made the rounds.

Before I could finish, the driver managed to get the bus through the crowd. He pulled up in front of the salon and blasted the horn to get my attention. The door slid open and he reached his hand out to me as though he was saving my life.

“You get in! Now!”

I quickly and regretfully kissed the remaining pinkies and hopped on the bus. The driver handed me my wet t-shirt, which I waved like a farewell handkerchief as the bus pulled away.

I spent the rest of the air-conditioned ride soaking wet, sitting in a puddle of my own making. The driver was right, the festival had been dangerous – by the time I got home, I had the sniffles and felt the beginnings of diaper rash. But for days after, my skin was smooth and soft, and smelled just as nice as a nice Thai girl.

XVIII. Trapped in the Spotlight, Part Three

We didn’t notice the rustling behind us – until it got very loud, very quickly. Two more elephants were in the bush fighting, slamming and bashing into each other. One of the great beasts rammed the other hard in the side. He lost his footing and crashed through the trees into the road, stumbling sideways right towards our truck.

“Go go go!” I yelled.

Tom shifted into drive and gunned the engine. We pulled out from under the teetering mammoth just in time. He regained his footing and turned back to his opponent. The first three elephants were still up the road ahead of us and they were getting closer faster, running towards the fight like bloodthirsty kids in a schoolyard. They were boxing us in. Tom tried to back the truck out of their way, but there was nowhere to go.

He drove back and forth in short bursts like a runner caught between bases. Looking for any kind of opening, he edged towards the three in front of us, then tried backing up again, then stopped. We didn’t know which way the fight might move; every direction was a gamble. Soon there would be no room to maneuver at all. Tom saw one slim chance. He stuck his head out the window, pointed to a steep gully by the side of the road and cried, “Hold on!”

He hit the gas hard, heading straight for the three elephants. Everybody screamed. Just as it looked like we were going to hit the elephants, he made a sharp right turn into the gully. The tires screeched. The truck tipped. I was still standing on the back fender gripping onto the rail. The tipping swung me around, my back hit the outside of the truck. Tom accelerated and the truck straightened up, churning up huge chunks of earth as it tried pulling out of the gully. I tried pulling myself back onto the fender. The truck, and I, gained traction and made it back onto the road, safe on the other side of the elephants. I crawled into the bed of the truck and collapsed, flat on my back. Looking at the travelers who staring down at me in various states of shock, I announced, “You can take pictures now.”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but one of the travelers videotaped the whole thing. The next morning, we all sat down to watch over breakfast. There wasn’t all that much to see. The night was dark and the camera was jerking all over the place. There were occasional glimpses of action lit up by the wildly moving spotlight. (Now that I think of it, I probably should have turned the light off.) The screen was dark, then we could see some trees, then a scared traveler, more dark, the back of Tom’s head, an elephant trunk, a foot (human), dark again, then something that might have been the side of the stumbling elephant when it almost fell on us. We rewound that section a couple of times, but we really couldn’t tell.

All in all, not much to see, but more than enough to hear. The whole story was on the soundtrack, the soundtrack that would forever change my image as Jungle Guide. From the moment we encounter the elephants, there was one, and only one, voice clearly heard above all others – mine.

“Be quiet!”

“You’ve got to remain calm!”

“For God’s sake, everybody shut up!”

“QUIET!!!”

Somehow, I don’t think Crocodile Dundee would have reacted the same way. But then, he never had to deal with elephants.

XVII. Trapped in the Spotlight, Part Two

… three Bull Elephants were walking straight towards us.

Tom didn’t stop the truck. He turned off the headlights and drove towards them. When he came to within about fifty feet, he stopped and shifted into reverse. He slowly backed up, keeping pace with the advancing elephants, all the while maintaining what he (not necessarily I) considered to be a safe margin of error. I told everyone to stay calm and quiet, and not to take any photos unless I gave the okay. The travelers had to absolutely wait until the elephants turned their heads away. Elephants had been known to get spooked by flashbulbs. To underscore the gravity of the situation, I told the travelers the story of the Dead Monk Photo. While doing so, I placed the spotlight below my chin. The story was completely true; I just liked to “heighten” the drama.

“Early one morning, about a year ago, in this very jungle, park rangers found a camera lying in the bush. They could see there had been some pictures taken, so they took the film to a local lab to be developed. There was one particular photo from the roll that made front pages all over Thailand. This photo, taken with a flash, showed a monk with his hand resting on the trunk of a wild elephant. The authorities called in elephant experts and Buddhists to piece together the story.

Two men, one monk, the other a layman, were walking through the jungle at night. The experts did not know why – walking through the jungle at night is never a good idea. That was when the larger animals come out to eat. The two men ran into the elephant which, not expecting to see two humans in the middle of the jungle at night, was almost certainly startled. The monk, evidently radiating Buddhist Loving Kindness and Compassion, calmed the elephant down to the point that the he could lay his hand on its trunk. The layman, evidently recognizing a great photo opportunity, took a picture, a flash picture, right in the elephant’s face. The elephant freaked out. The experts knew this because when the park rangers found the camera, it was lying next to their CRUSHED DEAD BODIES!”

My job was done. The travelers stood in the bed of the truck, clutching their cameras against their chests, fear in their eyes. Maybe I “heightened” the story a bit too much, but at least there would be no elephants freaking out. Or so I thought, before I heard the rustling in the brush behind us.

To be continued…