...during elephant polo Pang Tongkhoon became seduced by the company of adult Surin elephants once again and decided that the mahout training role was not for her.
   
   It took us a month or so to find Pang Boun Na - whose biography is below and is on www.helpingelephants.org - from a camp in Chiang Mai but she is with us now and quickly learning the relaxed lifestyle in camp and, of course, charming our guests.
   
   Her mahout brings yet another language to the camp, not counting the T.E.C.C. mahouts' home languages we can now communicate in the local languages of Basar Thai, Basar Muang (the Northern language), Basar Suay (the Isaan and Surin language closely related to Khmer), Basar Galieng (the Karen language - not yet sure which dialect), English (with Devonian grammar) and Japanese (Khun Lord is conversational).  So if the elephant bit falls apart, at least we could open a language school!
Pang Boun Na

    Pang Boun Na is our first real Karen elephant, the majority of historical logging work in Burma and the North of Thailand - at least in the British written histories - was performed by elephants and mahouts from the Karen tribes.  So we introduce another language into camp!

    Boun Na is slightly younger than Lawan (though we only dare say that in whispers!), she has had four calves in that time, two of which died due to the neglect of a previous mahout and two have survived and are working in tourist camps in Chiang Mai.

    Although a breeding and tourist camp elephant for a long while she has also spent some time as an illegal immigrant worker, logging in the Burmese forests, before she was rented by a Japanese family in Chiang Mai to produce and raise one calf - the calf is still with them.

    Boun Na is cared for by Khun Kek who is part of the family that have always owned her but has only recently become her mahout, his friendliness and willingness to work more than make up for the fact that he is having to learn at least one of the camp's languages!  (hopefully he'll teach us some Galieng too!)