One good thing about keeping a diary, writing a blog, jotting down your thoughts as a matter of habit is that when you are sitting there, head in your hands, while the situation surrounding you is spiralling out of control, when the counter-move you were hoping to avoid has happened and there's nothing you can do but sit and wait, when all of this is happening a little thought still sits in the back of your head - "Still, it will make a good story for the blog", or my parting shot at every briefing for the last few days, it will be a comedy once it is over and everyone's safe.

I won't bore you with the little hiccoughs, twists, turns that have made up life since I returned from holiday (my own fault for taking a holiday) and the looming end-of-month-end-of-year deadlines for things that keep the world turning and the wages paid.

Suffice to say the other day I awoke with clear head, functioning body and the next deadline a few days away.  I lay in bed for a minute and planned the day, you know the sort, a day to enjoy taxing the car, shopping for toothpaste, sign off on a rescue or two and then go and have a coffee with the parents-in-law.

Well, all was going to plan until 0830 when the phone rang, "Tong Kam's gone to Burma, but don't worry, we know where she is and two of our local mahouts - guys who grew up on both sides of the river - have gone to get her".  Tempted by newly cleared farmland on the other bank, she'd knocked down her tree and dragged it into some poor soul's corn field.

0830 - still cheerful, an interesting twist to my 'being normal' day.

0900 - Head in hands.  The phone rings again (mobiles work over there) "we've found her but the police are here too and they won't let us bring her back, please have someone Thai bring a copy of the ownership document and we will discuss the compensation"

Now, I don't know much but I have read some books - you don't send a subordinate illegally into a country like Burma armed with a photocopy and a pocket full of money; I already have one elephant and two mahouts under arrest, why add to them?  Mistake number one, perhaps had I done that it may have been over then and there, but it is a big risk to take with someone else's life.

By this time phones have started ringing back at the Hotel, the manager of the Casino is calling and offering to act as an intermediary - oh, so one elephant slips her moorings and suddenly the whole village knows - just bring yourselves and the paperwork and we'll help with the rest.  We enlist K. Teera the Anantara Resident Manager - my principles don't stand in the way of sending a battle hardened boss into the fray.  

We have coffee with a young ethnic Burmese policeman in a variety of different languages that none of us fully understands (he doesn't speak much Thai or English, but enough to listen, we don't speak any Burmese but the Casino security guys speak English and Burmese, K. Teera and the Casino Managers speak Thai and English and I'm just a blonde bimbo with his name written in Thai on his shirt, he thinks - none of us really speaks Shan which is what all the local people speak).

"The person in charge of the elephants has to come to the elephant with the paperwork and then we'll negotiate, then we'll release your elephant.  Who is in charge of the elephants?"

Hand in the air - second mistake.  OK,  "Mr John Roberts from Australia (I was going to get my hair cut that day too - I do have a bit of a surfer's look at the moment) will come negotiate", it is possibly two seconds before we realise our mistake: 90% of Burma is closed to foreigners especially those that stand out as foreigners and I don't exactly blend.

But in the time it takes to redial and say,  "no, it's OK, John's boss, Mr Teera can go instead" the Captain in charge of guarding the elephant, faced with an imminent White Devil has panicked and called his boss in Takhilek - this is now a big story.

Boss:  "DO NOTHING, WE MUST MEASURE THE ELEPHANT TO ENSURE IT IS THE CORRECT ONE".

So the rest of the day's story is from the poor mahouts, Ne and Beum. Teera and I had to provide five more copies of the ownership documents, one for every conceivable government department including Military Intelligence - that one thought worried me, has TongKam been working for the CIA all along?  If so we ought to tell Mr Disney - there's a kids movie in that.

The Officers arrived at the elephant scene and a couple of hours were spent measuring - she's got big ears, she's got a long tail, she has two eyes etc. - the Burmese press arrive (trying to get a copy of the article), photograph the prisoner and interview the mahouts.

The Officers leave ten armed soldiers on guard, the mahouts are told they cannot leave the country - subtly arrested - at one point K. Teera is loaded into a car and driven to within a kilometer of TongKam but then turned around. 

I age three years.

Day Two - no more mistakes, not much visible progress.

The story is now so big in Burma that it has reached the forestry department offices up in Keng Tung, the Casino staff are making calls on our behalf in Takhilek and we are told that all we must do is submit Burmese translations of all the ownership documents and we'll get our ele back.

I don't think she cares either way, the villagers are bringing her food and she's the centre of all sorts of attention but the mahouts are getting a little tired - even though they are allowed to spend the night with relatives in Burma, this ain't home.

We are introduced to the unsung heroes of the Thai Burma Committee, a group of officials on both sides who seem to specialise in solving civilian cross border issues in a calm, unpretentious manner (indeed their office in the bottom of a shop house in a row of un-inhabited shop houses on a back lot of Mae Sai hardly inspires but one quickly gets over that when one meets them).  Given the nature of a lot of cross border trade and cross border traders in the Golden Triangle, they can't have the easiest job in the world.

Thanks to the Burmese excitement over the story we are greeted with "ohhh, so you're the guys that lost the elephant", but these guys specialise in this sort of thing (except not usually with elephants) and so when they send us home promising to call later all seems better.

That's it for today, Kam is getting fretful, this isn't as much fun as she thought it would be, the soldiers are getting bored and the mahouts want to come home.

0830 the next morning, phone call,  "we've decided, you can have your elephant back, come and pick her up at 12 noon at the Second Friendship Bridge in Mae Sai."

Still a little nervous as anything could happen at this point but now there are lots of Thai authorities involved so the chance of the ele just disappearing seem to be lessening.

So I call the mahouts,  "when the truck comes just get on it, you're going to Mae Sai."

They speak to the soldiers.

"Truck?"

1030 - phone rings - "you have to hire a truck in Thailand, come with it - no, not you, someone less blonde - pick your elephant up and bring her back to Mae Sai to be handed over at noon."

1130 - K. Teera, F.C. & Amp set off in a Thai truck, with a Burmese soldier, into the Shan States.  John waits and makes polite conversation with Thai customs officials ("so, you're the guy who lost the elephant", "is she big?").
 
High Noon - Check Point Charlie - ummmm.... nothing, lot's of Thai officials in 4WD's with black windows arrive, return my wai, smile, "so you're the guy that lost the elephant" and speed off to the Burma side.  No elephant.

1300 - John goes for a walk, comes back to find the Customs area full of TV camera's, pressmen and other such folks.  John gives interviews "How does it feel to lose an elephant?", "Is she big?", "Is she in musth?", thankfully before I can run out of Thai answers and the press can come up with difficult questions the truck arrives.  Tong Kam in the back looking tired, mahouts looking even more tired, Anantara rescue crew looking hungry.

Having just given a press conference to the Burmese - the Governor of Takhilek turned up to wave Tong Kam off their soil - do the same for the Thai press.  Luckily ease of communication means that I am taken from the glare of the spotlight, I tend to bore in English, I must be an awful interviewee in Thai.  Eventually someone suggests that the elephant might be tired, to which the tired mahouts agree, everyone climbs into the truck and comes on home.  Kam spends the whole journey with her trunk over the top waving at boy scouts, school kids and passers by - she looks tired but seems to have got used to all the attention.


At home Tong Kam gets some sugarcane and a very large tree, the rescuers get food and I collapse in a darkened room at least ten years older than I was three days ago.

An amazing display of cross border cooperation of a sort that I never dreamed possible, having read what I have read, my dreams were filled with many fates for my elephants, mahouts and rescue team.  Our Christmas Card list just got a lot, lot longer, I have a lot of interesting numbers of powerful people on my mobile phone but I never ever want to be in a position to have to dial them again, nothing personal - cooperative, polite and friendly as they have been.

Thanks to everyone, authorities and locals on both sides of the border, who dug in and helped.