I woke up extremely hungover. I wrote something down like "Australian = devil" Sin Laundry (a combination of remember the sin lantern from the night before and remember to pick up my laundry) and Elephant Camp! (underlined). Rohan, the Australian devil, had told us the day before about an Elephant camp about forty minutes outside of town. Hungover, sunburned, unable to shave or shower (because of some water problem at my guest house) and wearing the same clothes as the night before (on account the laundry issue) I found myself motorbiking north past Mae Rin to a friggin' Elephant Camp with Liz, Carson and Rohan.
The place really was amazing though. This was the type of thing that would never in the states: elephants simply walk around this giant reservation mostly unattended and you go up and feed them bananas and bamboo and touch their babies and rub their trunks and let them cover you in snot. It is fantastic.
Each elephant has one trainer, or caretaker, who owns it, cleans it, trains it, feeds it and gosh-darn loves it. At 1:30 they parade the elephants around in a little variety show. They play harmonicas, they dance around, they play soccer and they paint. It's amazing to watch them paint -- something I knew they did, but was still impressed to see. They don't all paint the same way, they have different personalities: one elephant paints in long straight lines, another paints interweaving bands of color, another paints blotchy trees and flowers (they really do paint trees) and one of them was just smacking big dots all over his canvas. Might have to buy myself some elephant art before I go.

After the elephant camp we hung around Will and Liz's guesthouse a bit with Anh and the gang. Here I met another ex-pat named Billy who was celebrating his 63rd birthday and poured us Sangsum and coke and talked our ears off for a few hours. He had been living in Chiang Mai about 7 months, trying to make the most of his $580 a month pension -- in LA, he would live like a mole, in Thailand like a bank president.
Billy on social security: "hell, you drop dead at 55, those motherfuckers [the govm't] think that they just won the big one"
Billy on women: "my father always told me, man, why eat raisins when the grapes are ripe on the vine."
Billy on doing business with banks: "they don't want to hear about how your hunchback brother straightened up, just give us your goddman money, motherfucker!"
Billy on horse racing: "people always ask me for inside tips and think that I must be rollin' but what they don't know is that for every 3 times I might win a buck I must have broke my ass at the window 8 or 9 times."

Yowza.