It’s been nearly a month since we finished our time at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Immediately after our last day there, we made the long venture home to Vancouver, where I have been spending my time catching up with family and friends, soaking in a bit of BC summer, and searching for jobs and sanity during the ongoing BC teacher’s labour dispute. As with all of my travels, since returning my attitude about life in general has changed a bit. I have tried to focus more on how beautiful our province is, and how lucky we are to live here, rather than some of the nonsense that has been going on with my job. We are happy to be home, but there are just some days where we long for the freedom and serenity of the elephant sanctuary we came to love so much.
To begin, our time at the Elephant sanctuary was divided between volunteer work, observation, and interaction with the elephants (along with some fun shenanigans with the rest of our group). Our days would begin with the 7am breakfast bell, which was the first buffet of the day. ALL of the food was vegetarian, which is right up my ally! At 8am, our work would start. Within our group of about 40 volunteers, we were split into smaller work groups of about 14. Our first day was the toughest, and it was spent in the corn fields hacking down cornstalks with machetes to feed the elephants. Elephants eat about one tenth of their body weight every day, so you can imagine how much corn is needed to feed the 39 elephants that call the sanctuary their home. It was hard work, and certainly humbled me, as it was very apparent how little farm machinery is available in Thailand, especially to a sizable organization such as this one. We all rode back on top of the tall truck that was now filled to the brim. This meant we were sitting on the corn that was crawling with every kind of bug you can imagine, and that we were dodging branches and bridges, while holding on for dear life.
Our other daily jobs included cleaning up the elephant pens, prepping the fruits and vegetables to feed the elephants, and planting trees. Cleaning up after the elephants really wasn’t that bad, as they are also vegetarians!
Many people don’t realize that the Elephant sanctuary is also home to over 400 dogs, who were rescued from the 2011 flood in Thailand. Since the dog shelters were severely understaffed, we were told at the beginning of the week if we wanted to volunteer there, even for an hour, it would be much appreciated. So, I spent two days there.
Here you mostly walked the dogs. There were some in smaller cages, but they were either recovering from medical issues, or were new to the park, and the staff hadn’t quite figured out how social they were. Most of the dogs were kept in groups of 7-10 in larger “run” cages, where they could run around and socialize with other dogs. As you can imagine, there were a lot of dog fights that needed to be broken up. You usually did this by yelling and clapping as loud as you could, and if that didn’t work, then you would pour water on them. However, considering the situation they were in, the dogs seemed to get along pretty well.
If you weren’t walking them, you were cleaning their cages, or trying to get ticks out of their ears with tweezers. This was absolutely disgusting, but you could see how relieved the dogs were immediately.
These weren’t the only dogs on the property! Around the area where we ate the amazing buffet meals, there were about 15 dogs that were pets, and would keep you company as you sat, drinking tea and observing the elephants. There was also an area called the “cat kingdom”, where at least 40 cats of all ages and sizes called home.
We also got to visit a local school that works hand in hand with the sanctuary. The kids made us bracelets, danced, and played us music. They, and their teachers are trying to learn English, so we spent some time conversing with them. On our last day we got to take a sketchy tube ride down the river too! I also am throwing in the random picture of one of the huge spiders that lived at the sanctuary. Their bodies were about 2 inches long, without the legs included.
Then there were the elephants! We got to bath the elephants in the river, feed them pumpkins and watermelons, walk along beside them, and I even got to sit underneath one! Most of them were very gentle, some of them (the babies) were incredibly rambunctious, but all of them were beautiful. I spent hours just sitting on the deck watching them. Sometimes they would be 5 feet away from me, and sometimes they would be way off in the distance with their herd. Wherever they were, they were mesmerizing. Since the elephants were rescued from all over the place, many of them came to the sanctuary without any companions. Families formed during their time here, most notably the 3 elephants with physical disabilities who bonded together when they didn’t fit in anywhere else. One of them had broken hips from bearing to much weight in logging camps and forced breeding, one of them was blind from being beaten when she couldn’t finish her logging camp work because she was pregnant, and one of them suffered severe injuries from stepping on a landmine.
It saddens me to talk about the circumstances of which these elephants came from. Aside from the babies born in the park, all of the elephants came from lives of severe abuse and neglect.
Since tourism is one of the major contributors to Thailand’s GDP, it’s not surprising that many tourists long to interact with elephants while visiting. Elephant riding, elephant painting. elephant circuses, and elephant begging on the busy streets of Bangkok, are all too common. While I can understand why people would want to support these practices, I strongly encourage you to think about how that elephant would, for example, be able to paint an intricate picture with it’s trunk. It seems quite obvious that this is not a natural behaviour, but often, people are blinded by the how amazing it is.
In order to “train” an elephant to paint, have people ride on them, or perform, an elephant goes through a “breaking the spirit” ceremony when they are a baby. Essentially, the elephant is taken from it’s mother, forced into a tiny bamboo cage so small that it cannot move, and beaten mercilessly into submission. Bull hooks, boards with nails, large sticks and other weapons are used over and over until the elephant “has no will to live”. This ceremony goes on for days, or weeks, depending on how the elephant reacts. Unfortunately, this is how almost ALL elephants are trained. Once this ceremony has taken place, the elephant will continue to be beaten until they get their performance right, whether it be painting or performing. I’m sure you can imagine how long it would take for an elephant to learn how to paint a picture – a task that would make absolutely no sense to them. I’ve attached a video that is a trailer for a documentary called “An Elephant Never Forgets”, and in it, you can briefly see Lek, the founder of elephant nature sanctuary, with some of her rescued elephants.
Her goal is to prove that their are other ways to train elephants to be around people, through compassionate practices, and gaining the elephants trust – although ultimately, she would rather they be left in the wild. She also has many rescue and awareness projects in Burma, Cambodia, and other parts of Thailand. She is an amazing lady.
The elephant sanctuary does not allow the use of bull-hooks or any type of weapon to control the elephants. Each elephant has their own “mahout”, a person who is responsible for supervising the elephant around visitors to the park. The mahouts at the sanctuary direct the elephants with verbal commands, and non-aggressive tapping on their sides. Furthermore, the mahout is selected by the elephant after spending some time together. If the elephant does not trust the person, then they do not work together. When the elephants are roaming free throughout the 250 acre park (how they spend the majority of the day), the mahouts often walk beside them in silence, or watch the herds from the distance. They NEVER ride them. They are very peaceful people.
Even since returning from Thailand, I consistently see photos on facebook of people visiting places where elephants sole purpose is to entertain. If you are planning a trip to Thailand, and are interested in seeing elephants, please consider visiting a rescue organization where elephants are not abused or forced to do very unnatural, often painful acts. Elephants are commonly chained up for most of their day, with no quality of life, unless they are working or performing. Identifying signs of stress such as the elephants swaying (or as a lot of people call it, “dancing”) is an easy way to tell that the elephant is very unhappy.
Anyways, to end on a positive note, I have also attached the video that is going viral of my favourite elephant from the sanctuary – a young female named “FAA Mai”. She is playing with a plastic pipe, and it almost looks like ribbon dancing. She is the one who I got to sit with 🙂
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