Opening up wide for a treat. The guy in front is a mahut, or elephant trainer. They stay with one elephant and train and take care of that elephant so that they learn their personality and the elephant learns to trust and obey them.
In the hill tribe people of Thailand, the villages still catch, break, and train elephants to be used for labor in the village. These Khmer people have a long history of working with elephants and are often the ones who bring the elephants into the cities to beg, or start ride camps etc. Not all of these elephants are mistreated but you can imagine that the farther they are from civilization the happier they are.