Getting famous is all about who you know...

OK, so we couldn’t go to Southeast Asia without connecting with a few elephants, right? So we did! An outfitter called Tiger Trails connected us with another, Elephant Extra Large, which helps tourists learn about and ride elephants who’ve retired from the rough logging trade.

Elephants, as it turns out, are delicate creatures – sensitive big guys who don’t care to spend their entire night hauling logs. So they like people better and will happily be trained to carry people here and there, especially if, like us, the people can be trained to ride them without a ‘mahout’ – a driver. (No, I didn’t opt for this, being a bit squeamish about heights, but my son and husband did.) The mahout even showed them how to ride their elephants into the water and bathe them at the start of the day. There was a lot of banana feeding that went on as well.

I was really impressed at how kind and loving the mahouts were to these big dudes. There is an entire Lao lexicon of words used to communicate with the elephants – ‘Stop’, ‘Go’, ‘Right’,’Left’, ‘Lay down’, etc.. And well, OK, sometimes they barked a bit – but really the mahouts spent a lot of time singing to these guys, special songs for working in Lao of course.

Also part of the adventure was a stay at Spirit Lodge which is a very beautiful classic Lao big house, teak with plaster walls and big overlooks on the beautiful Nam Tak river. This luxury lodge was set up by a German who began this company, and has totally done it right. So imagine trekking, kayaking and riding elephants all day, then coming back to your REALLY comfortable bed in the jungle and a nice restaurant serving sautéed bamboo and decent French wine. That’s my idea of a trek! I liked everything about this company, which just started with the fact that they were the original sustainable tour company in this region – others have copied and disappeared.

If ever in Laos, I recommend Tiger Trails and Elephant Extra Large quite a lot!