FAO Lesley Warner;

Lesley, not a bad article on the Elephant village, but you got your facts a bit mixed up a wee bit.

In the early 70’s Chester (shall not insult you by saying Chester, England as you are not Aussie or Yank) Zoo marked a first with Elephants in captivity by having a calf born to an Asian (Elephus maximus) cow and an African (Loxodonta africana) bull. The calf, called Mohti, survived over 3 weeks but died due to intestinal problems... it was never actually clear if these problems were due to cross breeding or not.

You also say that the Asian species is far more intelligent than the African... wrong again: there just has never been the need to domesticate the African elephant & put it to work with the same intensity that people have done wherever the Asian species has been found. It has always been down to the people, not the elephant. However, it was African elephants that Hannibal trained and took walkabout, and a lot more recently, African elephants were trained and put to the plough in the Belgian Congo.

Interesting article a few weeks back by your colleague Mirin MacCarthy; she mentioned the phenomenon musth in male elephants being due to the “breeding season”.... no such thing, as female elephants come into oestrus individually at any time of the year, every 16 weeks. The male is able to mate successfully at any time, regardless of being in musth or not... in fact being in musth can cause a bull to be hyper aggressive so much that he will attack other elephants, including a female in oestrus.

Friend of mine was down at Nong Nooch the other day... seems that the extra set of barriers put up after last year’s fatality and the subsequent visit by the then Pattaya Deputy Mayor and the Minister for Tourism are now “missing” and the elephants are yet again easily able to walk through the 1 meter wide gap between the original barriers, right up to the stands and spectators. As mentioned in my letter to the Pattaya Mail Vol.V111 No.30, if something positive is not done, it’s gonna happen again. Even Phairat Chaiyakham at the Elephant village will tell you, reluctantly and after a lot of badgering, that yes, they have had a number of deaths over the years there, but (and I quote) “they were all mahouts and don’t count”.

Dear Editor,

I think this letter that I am writing to you is very important. Why? I hear you all ask. Only this morning I was using the very good services of Au Bon Pan in the Royal Garden Plaza patiently waiting for my delicious breakfast bagel when I hear a loudmouth (farang) shouting at the counter staff in there. From what I could make out (and I had no choice of whether to listen or not from the loud swearing and blinding he was making) that all he wanted was a roast beef and cheese sandwich. He was having a problems because instead of talking calmly to the workers he was continually shouting at them, which in my experience anywhere does not work, especially here in Thailand.

The really difficult thing for this guy is in Au Bon Pan you can actually create a sandwich to your needs all by pen and paper. If this person was actually as clever as he was shouting (like a baby) like, then maybe he could have actually worked this out for himself!

The purpose of this letter is to all you non-Thai people living/holidaying in this beautiful city: be patient, after all you’re living in their country where they have been taught to speak Thai not English/American/German or any other language. I have the utmost respect for these people as their English is a lot better than my Thai, and their patience with most of us Westerners is out of this world.

Congratulations Au Bon Pan and all other service workers who have to deal with these so-called farang. I do salute all of you. As for the loudmouths - I pity you. If you don’t like it here go and climb back under the rock you came from and good riddance.

Editor;

It is quite commendable and honorable that the gay community is finally putting some of their “pink” baht towards charitable causes. The pink baht is just as welcome as any other color baht, especially when going towards charity. And the methods now being used by the gay festival people are also quite commendable, and actually very much what I had written in my first letter, i.e., charity dinners, passing the hat, etc.

However, unlike what Rod Astbury writes in his letter this week (quote: “It is very easy for someone to put pen to paper and advocate alternative ways of making money for charities, but rather than prognosticating, the members of the Pattaya Gay Festival Committee are actually making it happen” unquote), the “straight” community does also raise money for charity. For instance, last year the Pattaya Sports Club charity golf tournament, just one of the many PSC charity events held throughout the year, raised over 400,000 baht for charity. The United Charities of the Eastern Seaboard have been raising fistfuls of money for charity for several years now. The Canadians raise over 100,000 baht every September for the El Shaddai children. The Jesters Motorcycle Club raises literally millions of baht every year for the Fountain of Life. These are just a few examples, and you know what? Maybe I missed it - maybe I was asleep that day, but I don’t remember any of them ever holding a sex parade down beach road as a prerequisite for donating the moneys they helped raise for charity.

PS - Actually, from reading most of the “opposed” letters, it seems the only thing the PGF is doing wrong is not inviting the entire sex industry to take part in their “festival”.