I may have mentioned after my last visit to Hong Sa that I had known I was in the right place, when after a long dusty climb from the river in a taxi I had help to bump start, travelling a road with logs strewn on either side, we dropped into a town on a high plateau to find an elephant walking down the dirt road with firewood on her back.

   Well, this time it had to be the right place as we were visiting the first ever Hong Sa Elephant Festival, a celebration of the Thai Lue people, their elephants - actually in the village of Vieng Kiew in the Hong Sa valley - and their traditional way of life.

   As they run out of logs in the local forests, as they surely will, they will find themselves with the same dilemmas and threats to their way of life as Thai mahouts currently face.  The Hong Sa festival was an attempt to jump in with some sustainable tourism options as well as being a celebration of the past.

   Despite the commitment in getting there - for us four days travel on the Mekong (no great hardship there) for two days of festival - there was a good crowd of foreigners as well as some helicopter travelling Embassy folks from Vientienne and a huge number of locals.  It was a big show in a small dirt street village - the guest house owners and the owner of the only Restaurant (great Thai food - but the owner was almost literally in shock at the volume of business and the appetite of foreigners) must be praying for and dreading next year in equal measure 

   We rented a house, by sheer chance, overlooking rice paddies and the local bathing/car washing/laundry area in the river - the heart and soul of the gossip crowd.

   I didn't take any pictures being the bashful Englishman I am but was reminded of the passage in Garnier's diary of the first French Mekong ascent in the 1860's during which they rented a house in a similar position, an entire page of diatribe on the shamelessness and rude manners Laos ladies whilst bathing, the (all male) party extended their rest period for two weeks for purely anthropological reasons I'm sure.

   But enough of me, some ele photo's - I just loved the colourful decorations for the "Elephant of the Year" parade, especially the one with a sting-ray on her bum and the white toe-nails!



...all dressed up and late for the ball...

 

...now she's found her friends (sorry about the plastic chairs - I admit that this was the view from the bar where most of the elephant networking was going on; lots of old ele friends, new projects hatched, old projects reviewed).



...through the rice paddies after the logging demonstration - job well done, but the logs are small and this ground is flat, you should come and see us in the forest where the real work is done.

PS.  I am honour bound to point out that, since the 1860's, the bathing habits of Laos ladies have changed and the Ladies of Hong Sa are modest and polite to a fault when gossiping about the funny, noisy foreigners who have rented the house on the hill.