Yesterday after escaping to a hotel with a pool, outside the historic district where banned, stopped off at Manoa Lao’s office and heard about their wonderful philosophy and approach to their elephants from a Colorado then Crown Heights Brooklyn chef expat. Lao just banned export of natural products like wood that had gone to a Thailand. This start-up could rent 7 elephants who were no longer needed for logging. The new law will also preserve the trees. Even the poorest families have amazing mahogany furniture. Eventually the sanctuary hopes to have more and breed but I found out today the female only has five or a little more years of fertility and only produce 1-3 babies. Laos was known as the land of a million elephants once–not sure how. They have a male 2 year old still nursing. I went out today with a couple from Ireland with this baby, his mom and grandmother. It was epic!

Last night an outdoor showing of an exciting movie by the same producers who later made King Kong, was presented outdoors. It was made in the 1920s about a Lao family’s fight to survive in the jungle and truly reflected the lifestyle that no longer exists except in areas hours from cities like this. Houses on stilts to haul up a ladder so wild animals can’t get in, rice farming. First they fought leopards but the climax was the terror of the elephant herd that tore down a village in rage because a baby had been taken. The houses went down like match sticks. In the end the elephants were caught and tamed. And tame they were today.