Note: Sorry if I'm boring the hell out of you with wedding stuff, but I only intend to get married once, and I want to document the entire process. Plus, it'll be all over in a couple months.
Yesterday, spurred by my incessant urging, Nam called the pachyderm rental company. The closest one is apparently located in Surin province, an hour or so from Nam's house in Mahasarakham. A while ago, I wrote that it only costs thirty bucks or so to rent an elephant for a day, so I had intended to rent several of the peanut-sniffing louts - Small, Medium, and Large, at least. Indeed this would have been possible as recently as a few years ago. Now, it is going to cost around ten times that much! What happened, you ask. Progress happened, my friends!
I am extremely happy to report that the sudden rise in price can be attributed to a single factor, one for which I am more than willing to pay. The elephant gets a ride to our house on a truck, instead of having to walk the entire distance on the side of the highway! This is something that I hadn't even thought about before. I had just assumed that there were rent-a-elephant franchises a lot closer to Nam's house. Apparently there is legislation forbidding the passage of walking elephants on the highways, or perhaps the people who own the beasts really care about them - either way, I'm happy! Plus, there's an added bonus! The people who own the elephant said they would wash the elephant all nice and clean (this is not to be taken for granted in any SE Asian country), and pimp it out with a riding harness and ph-ph-ph-ph-phat threads! Awesome!
But the best is yet to come. Nam told the owners that we wanted to use the elly in our wedding parade, and asked if it would get spooked by all the people surrounding it, plus the drums, etc., that mark a traditional Cosmic Buddha gathering. Guess what? The elephant likes music. It dances when it hears drums. In other words, to start out our wedding day, I will be RIDING ON A PIMPED-OUT, DANCING ELEPHANT. Fuck a Cadillac, yo. Pachyderm is the new pimp. This is going to be the greatest day of my life.
