Elephants and over the counter drugs in Bangkok

26 Nov 2005. Bangkok.
There I was in the middle of Bangkok, sat on the corner of Soi 5 and Sukhumvit, drinking a icy Singha and watching the world go by, when I was interrupted by the ‘tri-ummph’ of an adolescent Loxodonta cyclotis Elephas maximum. Only one of the strange things I had seen so far this evening. The mahout, or elephant handler, was leading his charge along the street and pavement between the bars and cafes, every time he passed a table he’d offer sugarcane or bananas that people could buy to feed to the elephant. Apparently there are up to several hundred elephants working the tourist route in Bangkok. Due to a ban on logging back in the 90’s many elephants were brought to the cities where they are hidden on the outskirts during the daytime (just how do you hide an elephant…) and led through the bar-streets in the evenings. Needing up to 250kg of food each day you can see why it’s better that someone else pays for it.
Many elephants working in the countryside used to suffer from amphetamine addiction when their mahouts attempt to squeeze that little bit more out of them, like a Russian trainer does with his champion shot-putter. By my experience earlier in the day I pondered heading back for some good drugs to spike a banana or two with… get that heffalump on a serious amount of speed, or E, or Viagra and follow it down the street for a seriously amusing, but potentially destructive time. Earlier in the day I’d been into a chemist to restock my travelling drugs cabinet and as usual in Thailand couldn’t get exactly what I wanted but was offered far better alternatives. Firstly I wanted something to help me sleep on overnight flights and when jet-lag has stuffed up all my timings. In the UK I use a over-the-counter table from Boots called Sleepeaze or something similar, here I was offered something that when I looked it up later on the net turned out to be an antidepressant with the added side-effects of suicidal tendencies – which makes me think the manufactures of the antidepressant don’t have the formula quite right somehow… Secondly I wanted a decent headache pill so asked for some paracetamol with codine, despite most clinical research showing that the amount of codine needed to show any useful analgesic effect is way above that contained in most ‘combined’ over-the-counter painkillers, I personally like it for the placebo effect. Anyway, told you could only get codine at a hospital I was offered tramadol instead, an artificial opiate with similar addictive properties (mind you, this is one of the few pills that is know to cure some migraine headaches within a hour or two so for some people it may be worth a stab).
Going to have to cut this story short I’m afraid. Was going to write more on the sights of the ‘press the flesh’ district but Wales is about to play Australia in a rugby international and I have a bar lined up that is showing it on the big-screen.