Chaing Mai has been on my radar for a long time so to finally be here is fantastic! We're here for a short 6 days, 2 of which are at the Elephant Nature Park. We're staying at a great little guest house called Green Tiger Vegetarian house. It's on a quite side street in the old city and serves up some amazing vegetarian food! Wandering the old city was a fantastic way to spend our first day. By this point we've been looking at temples for over a month, since early November when we arrived to Bali, so the excitement over exploring temples is starting to wane. Because of this I had looked up the most impressive and most popular temples in the old city and chose 3 or 4 for us to visit. Wat Chiang Man, Wat Phra Singh and Wat Chedi Luang were our picks and we weren't disappointed. They all offered something unique and were beautiful to explore. The old city was excellent unforuntely by mid afternoon I started feeling really unwell. At the time I thought it was the heat but it's nearly a week later and I still feel like crap so pretty sure it's a touch of the flu. I spent that afternoon recovering and fortunatly felt well enough that night to head out to watch a local Muay Thai Fight! This was largely for Chris' benefit but I atually really enjoyed it as well! The next day everything caught up with me and I spent the day in bed. This really sucked but was the right decision because the following day we had a big adventure lined up! The main reason we came to Chiang Mai was to visit the Elephant Nature Park located about 2 hours drive north from the city. It will go down as one of the most gut wrenching yet amazing experiences so far in my life. I love elephants, a lot! In fact I have a large elephant tattoo on my back I love them so much. I absolutely couldn't wait to meet some in person. Before coming to Thailand I had done a lot of research trying to find the best park and I'm confident we found it with the Elephant Nature Park. This is a sanctuary for injured and abused elephants from around Thailand. There is no riding, no tricks and no unnatural requests of these animals here. It's all about giving them a happy life and sharing this with people interested in learning more about these animals! If your squemish I would skip this next part but I urge you to read it to understand the reality of Thailand's Elephant problem. Thailand is famous for it's elephants, people travel from all over the world to see these amazing animals. Sadly most of the Elehpants in Thailand have been plucked from the wild to work in the tourism trade. To make them obediant elephants go through a stage referred to as crushing. They are chained up so they can't turn their head or move and tortured and restricted to crush their spirit and make them obediant. This could take 3 days to a month depending on the age and personality of the elephant. A mahout has to stay with the elephant during this stage 24 hours because sometimes the elephants try and commit suicide, choking themsevles with their trunks. Once they've been crushed they are sent to work in the circus, trekking companies to carry tourists or they are sent to walk the city streets for photo ops. When an elephant doesn't obey their mahout they get a nail behind their ear where tourists can't see or they'll get a bull hook to the head or ribs. Many people don't understand that riding the elephants and making them do tricks is extremely harmful to their mental and physical health. Sadly most people don't understand or know about this reality so elephant painting, tricks and riding is still extremely popular. Another source of enslavement happens for illegal logging. Elephants are set up in chains and carry heavy logs through the forest in dangerous conditions where many get mangled in the process. Sometimes they elephants slip, step on land mines or trip and break legs. This is why the Elephant Nature Park was established. It's a place where these elephants can be kept safe and rehabilitated. The 70 + elephants in this park each have a sad story that brought them here. Several elephants are missing parts of their feet from stepping on land mines or snares. Some were malnurished and had infections from the bull hooks used during circus tricks. Some have spine and hip issues from carring people on rides or from forced breading. Many of the Elephants were blind in one or both eyes from people taking flash photos and city lights that their eyes can't handle. Their past is sad but the ending is happy. The park is big enough to give the elephants a lot of space to be themselves. Each animal has their own Mahout (keeper) who tends to the animal everyday and ensures they are happy, fed and safe. No need for bull hooks, if the animal isn't interested in something the Mahout let's it go do what it wants and follows along. They bring fruit and food baskets out to the elephants throughout the day so visitors have a chance to feed them and take photos (without flash). If an elephant isn't interested and decides to walk away nobody forces it to stay just for our sake. This rarely happens ofcourse becasue these guys love to eat! On top saving elephants there are over 200 rescued dogs, many were brought here after the extreme flooding in 2011. They also have cats and water buffalo. Some of the elephants don't like the buffalo or dogs but mostly everyone seems to get along quite well. One of the reasons I love elephants is because they appear strong on the outside but in reality are caring, tender and smart. The emotional damage caused from their past is in some cases too much for them to be around people or other elephants. These elephants have a separate part of the park where they are kept for their saftey and the saftey of visitors and other animals. There is always hope that over time they will be introduced to the main area of the park but this isn't always possible. Most of the elephants in the park are very friendly and always keen for a feeding. Our guide Sum was great at explaining about the different elephants history and which ones were okay to pet and which ones to keep a bit of distance. All the older elephants roaming are females, the large bull is kept in a seperate pen so they don't end up with babies they can't support. They hope to release the male back into the wild one day. He was born in the park and is healthy and ready to be released once the government permits it. We were really happy we stayed overnight, our sleeping hut (which was incredible btw) was next to the sleeping pens where the elephants are kept. You can visit the park just for the afternoon but the overnight gives you a much better experience The Elephants are kept in large pens at night so they arn't stolen and so they don't destroy the gardens etc. Some elephants sleep in the same pen to ease anxiety. They have best friends or family they perfer to be around just like people. It was really neat to look out our bedroom window and see them next to us. At night and in the morning volunteers with the mahouts would come and treat any wounded elephants and feed them. They had a large number of volunteers who spend 1 or 2 weeks here helping out. These people usually fund raise before coming to pay for their stay and help support the park. We had a real shock as we enjoyed our second day at the park to see just across the river a group of tourists riding elephants down to the river, leading the elephants into the water to 'wash' them. Apparently there is a trekking company just next to the Nature Park that offers the rides. We were meant to go in the river with the elephants that day but because the weather was cold the elephants weren't interested in a bath and the mahouts don't force them to go in. It was actually fairly cool out and the thinner elephants were wearing blankets to keep them warm. Elephant skin is very sensitive to chilly weather and they can get sick when they're too cold. All this in mind it was hard not to run over and preach to these unknowing tourists about how harmful their actions were. We couldn't do that of course so instead we all silently judged them and hoped next time they would make a better choice. We spent two incredible days at the Elephant Nature Park before returning to Chiang Mai. Our last day in Chiang Mai we took it pretty easy as I still wasn't feeling very good. The most exciting thing we did was pick up the tailor made clothes we had ordered a couple days earlier. Chris got a fancy new sport jacket that fits him like a glove and I had a skirt and a top made from silk I purchased in Malaysia! They turned out beatuifully at a very decent price! That night went out for dinner and wandered the Sunday Night Market. This was a huge market that took over several streets in the old city offering food, goods and lots of live music. It was super packed at 8pm unfortunetly making it difficult to get around and shop so we didn't stay too long but it looked like some really interesting stuff could be found here.
We were sad to leave Chiang Mai as there was quite a bit we didn't see in the North but we were excited to head south for some beach over Christmas. We're now in Krabi for a few days before we ferry to Koh Lanta where we'll spend Christmas and New Years!
1 Comment
Erin
12/24/2016 03:16:26 am
Wow the elephant sanctuary looks AMAZING!!! So cool to be up close with the elephants.
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