Buffaloes have an undeserved reputation in Thailand for being stupid. One chubby charmer called Tong has done his bit to counter that prejudice, however, by securing a lifetime's job that would be the envy of many a mere human with a fistful of credentials.

Tong is the latest addition to the staff of the Four Seasons Resort in the hills outside Chiang Mai, and he's such an important recruit that a party was thrown to welcome him to the luxurious establishment - where he's known as Mr. Tong, if you please, to suit his job description: Guest Entertainer.

Although the hotel grounds incorporate beautifully-landscaped rice paddies, Tong won't be getting his hooves muddy. His job is to amble about the property, hobnobbing with the guests and taking the younger ones for rides.

His conditions of employment include free board and lodging (in a snug rice barn), and he has a lifetime's security of employment. And, since buffaloes can live to 20 years and more, and considering that Tong is just two years old, that could be a long time indeed of doing not much.

Tong, a two-year-old "white" buffalo, stepped into the hooves of his popular predecessor, a handsome fellow, Mr. Sand, whose death recently sent the staff of the Four Seasons - and many of the hotel's regular residents - into mourning. He was buried in the grounds with all the obsequies due to a venerable, 16-year-old buffalo.

White buffaloes (they're not strictly albinos) are particularly attractive animals. Their white hide gives their shaggy coat a luminous pink shade.

Unlike white elephants, however, buffaloes of that rare colour enjoy no special status in Thailand's animal hierarchy. In fact, Tong is lucky not only to have landed the job of a lifetime at the Four Seasons but to have survived the butcher's knife - the fate that befalls so many of his kind. About 400,000 buffaloes are slaughtered annually in Thailand for their meat.

The mechanization of Thailand's farms has over the years put thousands of buffaloes out of work and condemned many of them to the slaughterhouse. The amiable, ambling buffalo doesn't have the exotic attraction of the elephant, and while elephant camps and training centres are everywhere to be found in Northern Thailand only one entrepreneur attempts to pull in the tourists with buffaloes.

At the Thailand Buffalo Training Camp near Mae Rim buffaloes put on a show four times daily. The programme includes buffalo races, although - unlike Chiang Mai's horse racing track - no bets are taken.

The camp is in reality a working Thai village, where buffaloes take turns to operate a cane sugar pulping machine and one of Northern Thailand's few original water wheels. Although they seem to be happy enough at the camp, every one of these working buffaloes would envy Tong's good fortune.

The Four Seasons isn't the only Chiang Mai hotel where buffaloes roam. At the opulent Mandarin Oriental Dhara Devi, they work the rice paddies that are a central feature of the vast hotel grounds. Guests can relax on their individual, secluded terraces, sip sundowners and watch farmers plough their fields with muscular black water buffalo.

The rice paddies are no tourist mockup, but were incorporated into the hotel's 60-acre complex. The hotel was literally built around the paddies, and no farmer lost his land but was invited to continue working his fields.

It's strangely ironic that visitors to Northern Thailand have to book in at a luxury hotel to be assured of seeing buffaloes at work. Not so long ago, buffaloes grazed in a field on Chiang Mai's Huay Kaew Road, but now you have to motor far into the surrounding countryside to see these splendid animals still ploughing the rice paddies.

Thailand once had the largest buffalo population of all Southeast Asian countries. Twenty years ago, six million buffaloes worked Thailand's rice paddies, and virtually every rice farmer owned at least one. Today, only about 1.5 million survive on Thai farms, and there are fears that buffaloes could join tigers as an endangered species within the next two decades.

The recent steep rise in the price of diesel fuel fed hopes of a reprieve for the threatened buffalo, as increasing numbers of farmers mothballed their mechanical ploughs (`iron buffaloes') and turned again to traditional methods of tilling their land. Many farmers, however, have forgotten the traditional skills, and it will be some time before buffaloes replace their mechanical alternative in any meaningful numbers.

The plight of the buffalo hasn't gone unnoticed in royal circles, though, and Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn established this year a Buffalo Farming Science School, where farmers are taught how to use buffaloes in the rice paddies. Significantly, buffaloes were once known as Ai Tui, which translates as "honest royal worker," and annual festivals were held throughout the land to honour and thank these indispensable members of Thailand's agricultural labour force.

In neighbouring Burma, the task faced by rice farmers in making their cyclone-devastated fields productive again is made doubly difficult by the lack of buffaloes. Thousands died in the cyclone, and the replacement machinery being provided by the government and relief agencies is proving inadequate to the demands of tilling the sodden paddies of the Irrawaddy Delta.

Environmentalists and agricultural experts say Thailand should learn from Burma's experience and make sure the country's dwindling buffalo population shrinks no further. There's still a place in Thai life for the threatened buffalo - two Chiang Mai luxury hotels have proved that.

Text : Bob Tilley
Photos: Pon