Rod's new rented home was excellent. On a small side street in upper Bangkok, the front yard was paved in light blue ceramic tiles and a small concrete fish pond stood in a far corner. The bamboo table and chairs were typical of farang-in-Bangkok front-yard taste, I had a set myself. Farang is the Thai word for a Westerner - Rod and I are farangs, we live and work here in Bangkok. We're here for the duration.

Rod and I sat back, the beer was cold, it was a Saturday afternoon, a very hot afternoon. All the afternoons are hot in Bangkok. The only problem, the only thing intruding upon our illusion of peace and tranquility was the stench of elephant shit. Big piles of it. Just on the other side of the fence. Yes we were in central Bangkok and so were the elephants. I guess it may have been a contributing factor in the apparently very good deal that Rod got on this fine house he was renting - a real up-market residence.

I sat, sipped at my beer and remembered my childhood days on my Uncle's dairy farm in Southern Australia. The weather was much cooler but the smell was about the same. Sitting drinking beer in the stinking heat of Bangkok, watching the elephants, smelling the fetid stench of large herbivorous droppings. It all fitted together. Rod and I were perfectly comfortable as Ming, his Chinese wife pointed the garden house over the fence. Rod too was comfortable with the odor, he was brought up on a pig farm in Ohio.

The elephants, knowing that a free bath was on its way, had lined up parallel along the length of the fence separating their paddock - an abandoned building site - from the small Soi and Rod's house. They stood, looking sideways over their 8 foot high shoulders making quiet 'mmmmmmm' noises, waiting for the water to come. Rod says "came with the deal mate, we have to water the elephants and thereby bring good luck to the owner of the house."

The Chinese owner had specifically asked that Ming regularly watered the elephants as long as they were 'in town'. He believed that this would bring him a degree of good luck. Ming kind of believed it'd bring her a bit of luck too, so did Rod and I. You get to believe things like that over here.

Small encampments of elephants dot the city. Most of the elephants come from up-country around Surin in the far North of Thailand. They used to get a lot of work in the Teak forests, hauling the precious logs down the mountain for milling. But now the Teak trees have become rare - the industry at a stand-still.

The one single big income each year for the elephants and their loving owners is the Elephant Festival in Surin each year. Thousands of elephants from around the country gather for games, ceremonies and general festivities. The visiting tourists and locals provide a whole years income in a few days.

The rest of the year they all filter down to the South. Down to Bangkok and beyond down the Gulf of Thailand. Thai people revere the elephant. It features strongly in their mythology and beliefs. The elephant is good luck. And so they are, in a way, cared for. They come to the towns. They camp out in fields and paddocks. They then walk around the town and local people pay to walk under them or to feed them a banana or two. Tourists will pay for the same services from the elephant. You can hire a ride if you so desire. Thus do the elephants make a living between each annual Elephant Festival.

And so did the elephants come to be in the abandoned building site opposite Rod's new home where we sat, as the afternoon sun settled in the haze of purple and gray that is the 'air' in Bangkok, and Rod and I settled back to another cold bottle of beer. We sat and watched the rainbows coming off the arc of water going over the fence from Ming's hose to the waiting elephants, who grunted in appreciation at our kind administrations. I guess I could think of worse ways to kill an afternoon.