Elephant at dinner

While in Hat Yai we went out for dinner with some of Corey’s colleagues and shrimp farm operators. One of the farmers was an ethnically Chinese formerly Catholic but now a fairly spiritual Buddhist. Got all that? He was a delightful guy to spend an evening with, even though we couldn’t directly communicate due to the language barrier (Corey’s colleague was kind enough to act as translator for the evening). He was taking great pleasure in making all kinds of predictions about our little dude’s upcoming birth and what type of demeanor he would have based on mine and Corey’s Chinese birth year animals (apparently I’m a dog and Corey’s a tiger) over the bottle of whiskey he brought to share with the table. Throughout the evening various people kept stopping by our table to sell us one thing or another. All offers were declined until, at one point, a man came over with a bag of what looked like it might have been bamboo and asked us if we wanted to buy some to feed to his elephant – a bit of a gimmick that I wouldn’t normally support due to my concerns over the lifestyle and welfare of such animals. However, our friendly shrimp farmer friend felt that this was very important for me to do based on some tradition that I didn’t quite understand… something about pregnant women needing to give to others as much as possible and elephants being good luck. I think the whiskey might have been doing most of the talking at this point. Nevertheless, we paid the elephant’s owner and I wandered over to the street to have my face-to-trunk encounter.

Looking a little apprehensive

After I fed the elephant, our shrimp farmer friend informed me that in the old days pregnant Thai women would walk under the belly of an elephant for good luck and to ensure an easy delivery. He laughed and said I was lucky he didn’t inform me of this before I was sent over to feed the elephant. Lucky indeed….

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