Elephant Kingdom

Another of my somewhat obscure reads. This one, published 1959, collects the thoughts of the author who spent seven years in northern Siam (Thailand) as a teak-wallah. This entails working for a British timber firm, with contracts to remove teak from Thai forests.

It is a well structured and tidily written, with a logical explanation of his role and the way the whole teak operation works. As the title of the book suggests, the heavy lifting in this teak extraction is the working elephant. They convey the logs from their fallen position, usually on steep hillsides or deep gullies, to the drag-track - usually by pushing and rolling. From the drag track the logs are hitched to harnesses and dragged to the location where they are either floated down the river (mostly), or loaded onto trucks to be taken to the depot (occasionally).

There is much explained about the working and social habits of elephants, their mahouts (personal carer / operator!) and their phenomenal abilities physical and intellectual. There are parallels to the excellent Elephant Bill, which probably goes into even more detail that this book on all things ‘working elephant'.

As well we are treated to the full explanation of the teak harvesting business, the seasonal workflows (reliant on floodwaters to carry logs down the, not able to work mid-summer due to the heat and the fact the ground it so hard it damages all the logs), the rafting methods of getting the large volumes down the river, and the managing of large crews of workers.

Many of the mahouts were from the Karen tribe, from Burma and northern Thailand, and as well as mahouts there were an array of other workers (mostly refereed to as coolies - a dated term for unskilled labourers, although I don't doubt many did have worthwhile skills), and there was a lawlessness about some of the men who were under the authors supervision.

There was a comfortable transition for the reader as we accompanied the author on his seven year journey from arriving is Thailand to join the company as somewhat a rookie, to learning the ropes and
taking on more and more responsibilities. At the end of his time he was married on leave and returned with his wife and eight month old son which changed his working dynamic a little, and then it was not long until his contract ended, and so did the book.

This is the second book on Thailand in the 1950s I have read lately, both showing Thailand at that time as a place far removed from the mass tourism we know now. Both call up the state of the under construction roads, and the Thai's new to driving!
P18

Once through the crumbling city wall... we were in open country on unsurfaced earth roads and being treated to the no hands, no nerves, no brakes style of driving which was to be such a feature of my many road journeys in Siam.