Ariel loves her elephants, and I think they're pretty cool too. Chiang Mai offers lots of day trips to surrounding "elephant parks," so we booked a trip to the Elephant Nature Park for Friday. The Lonely Planet guide discusses the issue of the Asian elephant a little bit. They're endangered - only around 3,000 remain in the wild. There are another 2,500 or so that are domesticated, and they are considered "livestock" and not endangered species. The parks surrounding Chiang Mai range from ones that have elephants playing soccer and xylophones, to ones where people can ride them to waterfalls, to the one that we went to, which is just rescued elephants that are enjoying "retirement." There is some controversy regarding the "working" elephants in Thailand, so we figured the Elephant Nature Park is the best place since it emphasizes ethical treatment of the animals. It turned out to be a great choice.
We were picked up from our apartment, and then headed 62 km north of CM after picking up the other people on the trip at their guest houses. We were shown a documentary on the van ride that showed some American naturalists/filmmakers visiting the Elephant Nature Park, so we learned the story of the park. It was started by a woman nicknamed "Lek," who has devoted her life to rescuing elephants. She buys elephants from illegal logging operations, ones that are being used for "street begging" (where the mahout takes the elephant around the city and uses the elephant to extract cash from tourists by selling them fruit and then letting them feed the elephant), and from other tourist parks where the elephants are being ridden, etc. There are others who were orphaned when their mothers were killed for crop-raiding. At the "platform" (the main hangout at the park), there are little bios for each elephant hanging up on the walls, and all of them are pretty sad. Here is an example of an elephant bio: http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/herd/jokia.htm. The whole list of stories are here: http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/herd/index.htm.
The park is also a huge rescue shelter for dogs. Originally, they had 60 dogs, but after the floods in 2011, they ended up with around 400 dogs. Most of them are in a dog shelter at another part of the park, but many of them wander freely around the park and mostly just lounge around on the platform. Apparently the elephants don't like the dogs much, but it looks like the dogs know not to mess with the elephants. The park also offers "ecotourism" packages, where you can pay money and volunteer at the park for a week or two and help take care of the elephants. They also offer a dog volunteer program, which is free, and includes accommodation and food. Both seem enticing.
Happy dog
Notice the dog sleeping above the elephant
We arrived at the park around 10am, and first got to feed the elephants. The one we were feeding is albino and also blind, after being prodded in the eye too many times by her mahout, so she would just sweep her trunk across the area where we were standing and hope that one of us would put some food in her trunk. It was pretty fun, and incredible to watch an elephant shove an entire bunch of bananas into her mouth and immediately go for more food.
After we ran out of food, the elephants moved on. Throughout the day, the elephants just wander around the open park, and hang out with their friends. Even though only a few of them are related, they've formed distinct cliques (or herds), and tend to just stick with the same bunch. One elephant was pointed out to us who was standing at the burial site of her friend who died last year. Now she doesn't have other friends, but frequents her old friend's burial site. Each elephant appears to have his/her own human "keeper" who just wanders around with it all day, and makes sure it plays nice with the tourists. The keepers might control where the elephants go throughout the day, so tourists get a chance to feed them and bathe them, but I imagine the elephants enjoy those activities and might just know where to go throughout the day even without their keeper. We ventured off the platform with our guide and walked around the park some to visit other elephants. There are 35 elephants in the park. Only four males - the males tend to be more aggressive, so the park would be less peaceful with more males. We actually just saw a headline that in another park outside of Chiang Mai, two male elephants fought to the death after one escaped from his enclosed area. Not something the tourists want to see. One of the first elephants we saw was a "grandma" elephant, who is (I think) 75 years old. She had a hole in her right ear, so they put a "flower earring" in it. When someone asked what the purpose of the flower was, our guide said "so she can feel more beautiful!" Our guide was a cute Thai woman named Aum who seemed to be a huge fan of the elephants, and knew each one's story like a little boy knows each player on his favorite baseball team.
Another pair of elephants we visited was a blind female and her female friend that doesn't get along with any of the other elephants. Our guide said that none of the elephants like her because she steals their food. She gets along fine with the blind one, though, because the blind one doesn't know her food is being stolen.
We wandered over to a big open field and spotted the 5 month old baby boy elephant, who was grazing with his mom and two other females that help look after him. He seemed curious and ran up close to another group of tourists, but one of the "auntie" elephants was following closely behind and seemed to keep him in check.
Next we visited the 4-week old baby girl elephant, who is still being kept in a small enclosure with her mom. Another female elephant was pacing around outside the enclosure, and Aum told us that she wants to be her "nanny" and help take care of her. She was sticking her trunk inside the enclosure and touching the young elephant while the mom just munched on some food.
We visited a few more elephants, including a 17-year old with bad hips from too much walking on pavement while "street begging" and her good friend, a 50 year old female. They were munching on some food provided by the keepers, but one decided a tree branch looked tastier. I got a video of it below:
still hungry
Aum said it was our feeding time, so we had a break and ate some tasty vegetarian food. After lunch was bathing time, so we walked down to the river, and waited for the elephants to arrive. We were each given a bucket and stood in the river (it was only about thigh-deep) and splashed the elephants while they stood there and snacked on watermelon and bananas. It was very fun, and the water felt great.
We watched the elephants eat some more, then we were shown a documentary about Lek and the Park, and it included a horrific scene at the end that shows how mahouts perform the traditional training process to break the spirits of the elephants and make them submissive. The mood was lightened when a dog wandered into the room, saw another dog on the projection screen, and jumped up and attacked it.
We went out to the platform for one last feeding session, and we once again fed our blind, fat albino elephant.
Mae Boon Ma having a good scratch
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