Confusing Cultural Conundrum in the Central Highlands (Elephant Town Vietnam style)
I didn't know this at the time but there's a nursery song that every Vietnamese child learns, starts something like this...
"Chew voi cong er Ban Don
Chew cong nga, diew cong cher cong"
It means, so I'm told (in all the excitement I didn't get time to learn Vietnamese), "In Ban Don there's a baby elephant, his tusks are small because he's still a child", I learned this song on a stormy road, with a belly full of Saigon Special beer and Vietnamese food, on my way back to the very town of Ban Don.
"Voi" means elephant and the Thai scholars amongst you will have guessed that "nga" means tusk, because, well, it is the same in Thai - if you're an elephant nerd you'll find this fascinating - well maybe not, but I often say it was the mahouts who got me into this (usually uttered loudly and as an excuse in budget meetings, but in this case referring to my life and entirely positively) and the similarities and diversities between the various cultures of folks who devote their lives to their giant charges have always fascinated me.
So what about Ban Don? About 35km from the Cambodian border in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the capital of Dak Lak province until the French moved it to Buon Me Thuot citing Ban Don's heat and backwoods isolation; a town where everyone speaks their tribal language first, Lao second, Vietnamese third; where, driving into town, much like Ban Ta Klang in Isaan or Hong Sa in Laos, you can see eles grazing in rice paddies or walking down the road laden with wood; a town where an elephant boy can feel at home.
But who looks after the elephants? My GPS tells me, probably illegally, I'm only about 500km from Lung Lord's house in Ta Klang (were I equipped with a helicopter), 500km and bits of three countries, so it would follow that the mahouts would be Khmer speaking Suay right? Wrong - I don't comprehend Suay but I got my guys on the phone to see if communication could be established, it could not. They all speak Lao (which is remarkably close to my inexcusable Northern Thai) so you'd think they'd be Thai Lue as in Hong Sa? Wrong, they all speak Lao anyway around here, these guys either live in lowland Laos style houses or communal long houses.
Their equipment is a long pole with a spike and curve on top, a kind of medieval pike, of the kind I last saw in Sri Lanka - they know their elephants well, like professional, born-beneath-the-trunk generational mahouts and hardly ever use any implement; they also use a stick with a piece of buffalo horn on the end of a long string to extend the reach of their arm - something I've never seen used with elephants before.
A little asking around and I discover that they are the Ede people, allegedly originally from Indonesia and M'Nong people migrated from who knows where? But when riding the elephants they sit like the Laos but give their commands in Suay - or a language derived from it - the language of the Isaan mahouts around Surin and Buriram in Thailand.
To muddy the waters further they take me to a graveyard, a mausoleum reserved for their best elephant catchers, the greatest of which caught 427 in his time, including a white elephant that he presented to the King of Siam earning the Siamese princely title Khunsunob - there are graves of lesser huntsmen who only caught the odd hundred. Is it safe to guess that this area was under Siamese control at the time? Is it safe to guess anything?
How do/did you catch your elephants? In kraals and stockades like the Laos, Galieng or do you use lassos like the khru ba yai of Isaan? Ahhhh.... let us show you the equipment!
Buffalo hide ropes and bamboo lasoo poles, exactly the same idea and equipment as in Isaan (actually this shouldn't be surprising as the lasoo method lends itself to the plains whereas the stockade to mountains) but on a little questioning it turns out the ceremonies and protocols are similar to what little I know of those used by the Khru Ba Yai of Isaan.
To sum up, if not conclude, at the most famous elephant town in Vietnam, close to the Cambodian border, you find elephants cared for by an Indonesian speaking people, the leader of whom had a Siamese princely title but who speak pure Lao as a second language; their elephant commands are related to (possibly old and mispronounced) Suay, their traditions and handling methods seem to be directly Isaan.
I scratched my head, had another Vietnamese coffee, reflected that their elephants were fat, happy and (at least at the Ban Don Eco-Resort) had plenty of room to roam so none of this really matters and, of course, a conundrum of this scale is always another excuse to re-visit an elephant town.
"Chew voi cong er Ban Don
Chew cong nga, diew cong cher cong"
It means, so I'm told (in all the excitement I didn't get time to learn Vietnamese), "In Ban Don there's a baby elephant, his tusks are small because he's still a child", I learned this song on a stormy road, with a belly full of Saigon Special beer and Vietnamese food, on my way back to the very town of Ban Don.
"Voi" means elephant and the Thai scholars amongst you will have guessed that "nga" means tusk, because, well, it is the same in Thai - if you're an elephant nerd you'll find this fascinating - well maybe not, but I often say it was the mahouts who got me into this (usually uttered loudly and as an excuse in budget meetings, but in this case referring to my life and entirely positively) and the similarities and diversities between the various cultures of folks who devote their lives to their giant charges have always fascinated me.
So what about Ban Don? About 35km from the Cambodian border in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the capital of Dak Lak province until the French moved it to Buon Me Thuot citing Ban Don's heat and backwoods isolation; a town where everyone speaks their tribal language first, Lao second, Vietnamese third; where, driving into town, much like Ban Ta Klang in Isaan or Hong Sa in Laos, you can see eles grazing in rice paddies or walking down the road laden with wood; a town where an elephant boy can feel at home.
But who looks after the elephants? My GPS tells me, probably illegally, I'm only about 500km from Lung Lord's house in Ta Klang (were I equipped with a helicopter), 500km and bits of three countries, so it would follow that the mahouts would be Khmer speaking Suay right? Wrong - I don't comprehend Suay but I got my guys on the phone to see if communication could be established, it could not. They all speak Lao (which is remarkably close to my inexcusable Northern Thai) so you'd think they'd be Thai Lue as in Hong Sa? Wrong, they all speak Lao anyway around here, these guys either live in lowland Laos style houses or communal long houses.
Their equipment is a long pole with a spike and curve on top, a kind of medieval pike, of the kind I last saw in Sri Lanka - they know their elephants well, like professional, born-beneath-the-trunk generational mahouts and hardly ever use any implement; they also use a stick with a piece of buffalo horn on the end of a long string to extend the reach of their arm - something I've never seen used with elephants before.
A little asking around and I discover that they are the Ede people, allegedly originally from Indonesia and M'Nong people migrated from who knows where? But when riding the elephants they sit like the Laos but give their commands in Suay - or a language derived from it - the language of the Isaan mahouts around Surin and Buriram in Thailand.
To muddy the waters further they take me to a graveyard, a mausoleum reserved for their best elephant catchers, the greatest of which caught 427 in his time, including a white elephant that he presented to the King of Siam earning the Siamese princely title Khunsunob - there are graves of lesser huntsmen who only caught the odd hundred. Is it safe to guess that this area was under Siamese control at the time? Is it safe to guess anything?
How do/did you catch your elephants? In kraals and stockades like the Laos, Galieng or do you use lassos like the khru ba yai of Isaan? Ahhhh.... let us show you the equipment!
Buffalo hide ropes and bamboo lasoo poles, exactly the same idea and equipment as in Isaan (actually this shouldn't be surprising as the lasoo method lends itself to the plains whereas the stockade to mountains) but on a little questioning it turns out the ceremonies and protocols are similar to what little I know of those used by the Khru Ba Yai of Isaan.
To sum up, if not conclude, at the most famous elephant town in Vietnam, close to the Cambodian border, you find elephants cared for by an Indonesian speaking people, the leader of whom had a Siamese princely title but who speak pure Lao as a second language; their elephant commands are related to (possibly old and mispronounced) Suay, their traditions and handling methods seem to be directly Isaan.
I scratched my head, had another Vietnamese coffee, reflected that their elephants were fat, happy and (at least at the Ban Don Eco-Resort) had plenty of room to roam so none of this really matters and, of course, a conundrum of this scale is always another excuse to re-visit an elephant town.
Where the Elephant Catchers Go to Die
by David Clement Davies
The cemetery of Ban Don village in western Vietnam is still where the elephant catchers go to die. But it is hardly a stirring testament to a once mighty tradition. The mournful wooden graves poke through the jungle like broken down latch gates. Only the fading inscription on Ma Trong's tomb trumpets their illustrious past.
Ma Trong - Chief of the M'nong and Grand Chief of the tribes of Dac Lac, it says, Chevalier of the Legion D'honneur, Official of the Royal Dragon of D'annam, Knight of the White Parasol and the Order of a Million Elephants.
Impressive. Ma Trong died in 1947, a year after the start of the Franco-Viet Minh war. When elephants were the true kings of the forests that stretched right across the Dak Lak plateau and into Cambodia, the villagers of Ban Don were kings among the elephant catchers.
Ma Trong had an even more famous uncle, named R'thu. In an age when the trees still protected his people, R'thu probably had no need of all the colonial name calling. He was simply known as Kimjunop - King Elephant. R'thu founded Ban Don in the middle of the 19th century, taught the villagers to catch elephants and lived to the venerable age of one hundred and ten.
"Oui, Monsieur," said a toothless old woman, pointing through the palms and white coffee flowers towards a longhut and the home of an elephant catcher.
Just two days before he had caught an elephant. The M'nong used to catch, if not millions, then certainly hundreds of elephants across the ravishing hills that ruck towards Cambodia.
The M'nong, like the Ede, the Tai and the Nung, are Montagnards, mostly hill people and one of Vietnam's numerous minorities. They are also among some of the country's poorest inhabitants. Though their traditions seem to be gaining some protection, the Vietnamese still treat them as an oddity and a source of cash. The official Tourist office in Ban Don village carefully fields the dollars and the visitors who come here to ride elephants, watch elephant races and photograph the festival on March 26.
The master of the house wasn't at home but we didn't have to look far. At first it was a thrilling and then a pitiful sight. The baby elephant shifted nervously and strained at the chain that tied her to a tree, as I stroked her forehead. The wound on her hind leg, where she had been shot with an arrow to weaken her, was raw and livid and she kept trying to sit painfully on her haunches.
For the right price, as well as races and two day Safaris, the Tourist Office will organise an elephant hunt for you, though there is no guarantee of catching one. Sometimes it can take two months, sometimes only a day. The M'nong no longer hunt large wild elephants. It is too dangerous, and after eight the elephant is difficult to train. Nor will they chase elephants younger than three, because it is hard and costly to get them to take milk.
Before tourism the M'nong used elephants for hauling wood, for logging and for the hunts. They have always been a key to status and wealth. A young Asian elephant can pull 500 kilos at a go and comfortably shift 5 tonnes a day. There are about 50 domestic elephants in Ban Don district today, 18 working in the village, and tourism seems to direct most of the traffic. Though the hunter who caught the baby would have no truck with tourists - he thought it would bring him bad luck.
Kham Sing was waiting for us by the tourist office, at the edge of the swirling coffee brown Sarapok river. An elephant lives about as long as a man, and at 16, Kham Sing was barely an adolescent. But his Nai, his driver, scoffed at the idea he would have any trouble carrying two of us. To confirm the fact another great, double-domed head, sprouting with hairs bristling like a porcupine, came swaying down the path. A family of five Vietnamese was perched on his back, waving a video camera at the long huts.
For the M'nong, the days of Kimjunop have long gone. When the French first came here in 1899 they had to retreat again in the face of an impossible terrain and hostile tribes. Now, right across Dak Lak, are the signs of Vietnamese progress; towns and schools, metalled roads, the noisy provincial capital of Buon Ma Thuot. In another elephant village, Buon Juan, also on the tourist trail by the lovely Lak lake south east of Ban Don, the number of working animals has dwindled to four and the Vietnamese have begun to restrict logging with severe penalties. The M'nong here don't hunt elephants anymore but buy them from Laos if they can. At 40 Million Dong each, around 3000 US dollars, an animal can literally turn into a white elephant.
Yet remembering that baby elephant, I had mixed feelings. At least control of logging would be good news for the wild elephants. In Nam Cat Tien National Park, a new reserve, the forests also shield Rhino and Tiger. Plenty of wild elephants still roam between Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, following the monsoon and the flowering leaves that feed their gigantic appetites. If R'thu could see Ban Don village today and its crop of souvenir stalls, perhaps King Elephant would be spinning in his grave. Yet looking at Kam Singh's proud head under a glowing sunset, silhoutted against the burning red earth, you can't help thinking that there is still plenty of majesty left in the world.
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The Central Highlands province of Dak Lak December 19 paid homage to the practice of elephant hunting by local ethnic people in Krong Ana Commune, Buon Don District.
The event was part of the Buon Ma Thuot-Dak Lak Culture and Tourism Week, hosted by the province from December 16-20.
Tourists and locals watched December 19 as 31 hunters rode 15 tamed elephants to catch a wild elephant.
The father of elephant hunting is N’Thu K’Nul from Laos, who was born in 1928.
He was also the founder of Ban Don, a famous area of Buon Don District with a long tradition of hunting and taming elephants.
He captured hundreds of elephants including a rare white elephant, which he presented to Thai royalty in 1861.
The King of Thailand at the time conferred him the title of “Khunjunob,” meaning “elephant hunting king.”
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