360 Degrees Longitude (36 page)

“I would be happy with a bowl of cereal with real milk from a real refrigerator, not that boxed UHT stuff that's always warm,” Katrina said. September was pining for the banana chocolate chip muffins that her friend Heidi makes. For me, only Fiery Hot Flautas from Chevy's with extra jalapeño jelly could make life complete.

Before we had left for our trip, all of us, but especially the kids, counted down to the moment we would leave on the World-the-Round Trip. This started many months before we left. As I lay in a spartan hut near the Burmese border pining for Fiery Hot Flautas, I realized for the first time that we weren't counting down our return to California. Except for the occasional food cravings, there was little thought of home being any place except where our stuff was at the moment.

• • •

It was elephant time. Katrina was so excited I was worried that when the elephants started to show up she would rush up to one and give it a giant hug on the ankle. In my mind I was rereading a Tanzanian newspaper article about a little boy whose last act in this life was agitating an elephant by throwing a rock at it. Voices in my head started arguing.

“Yes, yes, yes, but that was a wild animal. These elephants are trained.”

Another voice said, “Soooo. I am quite certain that the elephants have not had personality screening prior to applying for the job of hauling tourists around.” While the voices in my head were busy arguing, I told Katrina to stay away from the elephants.

She didn't. I was to learn a lot about elephants that day, but even more about Katrina.

When the elephants started to arrive at the village, Katrina decided that she was going to make friends with “The Cute One.” When I wasn't looking she picked an armful of grasses and flowers as an offering to The Cute One, and then climbed up the tower that was used for getting on the beasts' backs so that she was at its eye level.
There she sat, holding out her offering. The Cute One then took Katrina's bouquet in her trunk, consummating a friendship. Katrina continued by having a long conversation with her new friend.

I am not sure how all this occurred right under my nose after she was told to stay away from the elephants, but Katrina was now friends with The Cute One and
had
to ride her and only her.

Elephants are massive beasts. I never fully appreciated this until perched atop one. Katrina, Jordan, and Granny climbed aboard a bench-seat that was strapped to The Cute One's back and lumbered off into the jungle. September and I rode another elephant we nicknamed The Big Guy. Soon after we got underway, The Big Guy's handler offered me the “privilege” of trading places—I could sit on the neck and the handler could sit on the bench, next to September.

“COOL!” I enthusiastically traded places. No sooner had I maneuvered into place than I realized that an elephant's head is not equipped with a handle to grab onto. I also failed to appreciate that an elephant doesn't really have much of a neck to sit on, so I was sitting on top of his shoulders, which swayed back and forth a tremendous amount as he walked. I seemed to be sitting on top of a three-story house that was rocking back and forth in a 10.0 earthquake. “This elephant is not OSHA-approved!” I yelled.

The elephant's handler asked, “Do you want to sit on the bench where it is safe?” There was something in the way he framed the question that suggested weakness if I were to retreat. It's a guy thing, but after making a big deal out of sitting on The Big Guy's shoulders, I couldn't give up so easily, and remained on The Big Guy's shoulders for the next couple of hours.

We approached a river. The Big Guy stood at the edge of the river-bank, giving me a bird's-eye view of what it was about to do—step off what seemed to me a cliff and into the river. As he contemplated his best path, I quickly reviewed my options, which were limited to jumping off. I considered that, then consoled myself that my will was in order.

When The Big Guy stepped off the bank and into the river, I was thrown forward. I once again searched the elephant's smooth and broad head for anything to grab onto. No handle materialized and I stayed on purely by divine intervention.

Once we were in the river, the elephant directly in front of us decided it was time to relieve itself and we were given a demonstration of the sheer volume of material of which an elephant needs to be relieved. A small mountain was laid there and as the water began backing up behind it, I recalled that I had “showered” in this very river the previous night. I was overcome by the urge to drive to the nearest Wal-Mart, buy a case of Evian, and bathe in it.

Unfazed by the fact that his buddy had just pooped in the river, our elephant paused to get a drink. After four or five long drinks The Big Guy's trunk came up to my eye level and I braced for an instant fire hose.

The Big Guy wasn't done toying with me. For the next hour or so, it seemed all The Big Guy wanted to do was remind me that he was bigger than me and that I was highly annoying. As we trundled along he kept pausing to uproot some small tree and then chew it, when suddenly a large branch thick with foliage came directly at me.

“Your elephant is trying to kill me!” I asserted to his handler, who was sitting comfortably on a bench next to September.

“His head itches, that is all,” the handler assured. “He uses the branch to scratch.”

The Big Guy also liked to sneeze on me. I could feel him gather a tremendous breath of air, then his trunk would come up to my eye level and I would be hit with a hot jet of air mixed with dust and droplets of goo.

Meanwhile, Katrina, Jordan, and Granny were hundreds of yards ahead of us on The Cute One and I couldn't see them any longer. When September and I finally caught up with them, I was relieved to see that Katrina and Jordan had not been reduced to the thickness of a sheet of paper and had already dismounted. Had I known what to expect, I don't think I would have agreed to the elephant trek, and I certainly wouldn't have subjected my kids to it.

As we dismounted, Katrina came rushing up to September and me. “Wow!” she exclaimed, “can we do that again?!”

“How's that? I am
so glad
it's over. Did your elephant try to knock off the trainer who was riding on its shoulders?”

“Oh, he didn't ride there most of the time,” Katrina replied. “Jordan and I took turns riding on her shoulders. It was really fun!”

I was dumbfounded. I would never have allowed them to ride up there if I could have seen what was going on.

“Didn't you nearly get thrown off every time your elephant stepped off the bank to cross the river?”

“Oh no,” Katrina said. “The Cute One held onto me really tight by pressing her ears to my thighs. It would have been scary otherwise.”

What was this all about? The Big Guy seemed determined to dislodge me one way or another. The Cute One was holding on to Katrina.

“Didn't your elephant keep sneezing on you, or uproot a tree and try to knock you off with it?”

“No,” Katrina confessed. “I made friends with her back in the village before we started. I gave her something to eat and a bouquet of flowers.”

“How's that? I thought I told you to stay away from the elephants.”

“Gee Dad. I didn't want to get on a big animal like an elephant without knowing it was my friend first.”

 

John's Journal, January 15

We found ourselves traveling for a few days with two young women from Denmark. They had been working their first job out of high school as letter carriers for the Danish postal service for a whole four months. Four months of work can be so demanding mentally, it is little wonder they were taking a one-month leave of absence to travel around Southeast Asia. They had a week remaining and wondered where to go next. I suggested Cambodia
.

“Where is that? What is there to do there?”

Though the girls were in a neighboring country, they weren't sure where Cambodia was, had never heard of the genocide there, and were only vaguely aware that there was once a war in a place called Vietnam
.

On the one hand these were still just kids, but they were also recent products of a rich country's educational system. They were up on current world events and certainly knew much more about U.S. politics than I do about European politics. I have little doubt that the average recent U.S. high school graduate would also know very little about Cambodia
.

Speaking of Cambodia, we went to church in Chiang Mai and met a local family who showed us around town. The father was an ice cream vendor. We learned that one thousand baht (US$25) bought all of his capital needs for a day. He considered it to be a lot of money
.

I couldn't help but to compare my situation relative to my new ice cream vendor friend, and then to Prak whom I had met in Phnom Penh. To me, $25 per day was trivial, and while it was a significant sum in Thailand, it would have been an unthinkably large sum to Prak
.

We reached a village, very much like the one we stayed at the night before. As the sun was setting, we were greeted by a toddler who acted like he owned the place. He quickly won the hearts of the Danish Postal Pin-Up Girls, who showered him with all the affection they had tried to give to Jordan.

The chief of the village had many wives and they were going to dance for us later that night. At the appointed time we sat around a fire that took the chill out of the night air. The same toddler came out to greet us and was instantly drawn to the Danish Postal Pin-Up Girls.

Little kids can get away with anything, because they're so cute. This little guy went right up to his new Danish girlfriends, pulled down his pants, and started to pee. Smiling at the dumbfounded Pin-Up Girls, he maintained eye contact the entire time he drained his bladder.

I couldn't help but think that he was marking his territory now that others were nearby. The chief had his gaggle of girls, darn it, and these particular ones now belonged to a two-year-old. While most of the village was chanting and dancing around us, they were oblivious that their youngest was making the statement that he was the alpha male.

Jordan was aghast. “Look what that little boy is doing! Don't his parents know any better? Why don't they teach him better?”

I wanted to tell Jordan that his parents had probably taught him exactly what they should have, and he was now doing it. But Jordan just wouldn't be able to grasp it, so I just smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

January 18–January 19
En Route over the Pacific

L
eaving Chiang Mai, Thailand, we started a sequence of events that would include one overnight train and three long-distance flights, culminating fifty-one hours and thirteen time zones later in San Jose, Costa Rica.

I wasn't looking forward to it.

After the overnight train, we arrived at the airport in Bangkok when it was still dark and waited for our afternoon departure for Taipei, then onward to Los Angeles. From there we would catch our flight to Costa Rica. It was time for Granny to go home and we watched her board her plane. We wouldn't see her for another six months. When it was finally our turn we found that China Airlines gave the herd in economy class a wide selection of movies to choose from, everyone having their own personal screen to view it on.

Predictably, Jordan zeroed in on a recent release superhero movie. The flight was long enough that Jordan watched it twice. The moment we stepped off the plane in Taipei, he proceeded to explain the plot in detail. “Mom, will you watch it with me on the next flight? Will you? Say you will!”

“Why I'd love to!” September said, in desperation to keep Jordan from boiling over.

“The next flight is a red-eye,” I said. “You sure you want to stay up and watch a movie?”

“Even if that movie is on the next flight, Jordan has been up for twenty-four hours. He'll be unconscious before we leave the tarmac.”

We were all starting to get a little ragged and ripe. With six hours before our flight to LAX we were getting restless.

“Hey, did you see that?” I asked September. “There's a picture of a showerhead next to the door of the restroom.” A shower sounded divine, but our luggage was checked through to L.A. and none of us had soap, towel, or a change of underwear in our carry-ons. But that wasn't about to stop us.

“You guys stay here and read your books,” September said to the kids. “We're going to take a shower.” Katrina and Jordan had earned a fair amount of freedom during our travels. For example, we felt just as comfortable leaving them alone in an airport departure lounge during a shower as we did in a hostel while we did laundry.

“Together?” Katrina asked.

“Not as far as you know.”

No towel required only a bit of improvisation. Using a handful of soap and a wad of paper towels from the men's restroom, I was able to shower, using the paper towels to pat myself dry. Bliss. It was one of the best showers I have ever had.