In the spring of 1886, Ernest Satow wrote to his friend W.G. Aston in Japan that his recent journey to the Lao states had been "on the whole a pleasant one, and proved to be very necessary from an official point of view. But it took a terribly long time."
The trip from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and back took 101 days and he traveled by boat, elephant, pony and on foot. Among these, travel by elephant was the most trying. "It (he or she) appears to move each leg separately, and the rocking motion thus communicated is extremely fatiguing." When he descended from his mount "my loins ached as if they had been well beaten."
Though the sound of their bells echoing among the Thai hills reminded Satow pleasantly of Switzerland, the elephant remained unwelcome transport. By the time the party had walked enough for one day, and climbed into their howdahs, they discovered that the merit of the pachyderms was that "they make you so uncomfortable that in a short time you feel going on foot to be less fatiguing."