Day 3 in Thailand and I already feel like I have done so much. Everything is so clean, the building are beautiful, behind every normal building there is a temple made of gold and beaming with personality, every person I have met is the nicest in the world, and the food. So good!
So this blog might make you take a step back and think for a second about animal conservation. We planned a full day trip to the Elephant Nature Park were elephants that have been tortured, abused, and injured go because there chances of being released back into the wild are rare.
As I said there are tons of places you can go to ride elephants, trek with elephants, and enjoy elephants in Thailand. However, this one place is one of the only ones open to allow elephants to roam freely and live somewhat in a natural environment. Lek, is the proud owner of the Nature Park and we heard a lot about her start of the park and how she looks at the animals.
The park now consists of 33 elephants that all have there own story to tell. We watched 2 video’s regarding the elephant handling and trade of them in Thailand. And I can’t even begin to tell you just how sad it is. When elephants are trained to become domesticated, they are put into a “training cage” and forced to endure a minimum of 3 days of torture. Over the 3 days, they are tied to the ground, broken of there spirit to fight back, beaten with sticks that have nails on the end of them, poked in the eyes to obey commands, poked in the ears with nails when they fight back, not allowed to sleep, not fed and deprived of water, and in some rare cases pumped with drugs. I am not even kidding, try watching the video. Almost all domesticated elephants go through this process, it is a sad depressing fact of life for elephant handlers(known as Mahout’s).
The elephant population in Thailand was once in the 100,000’s and now is down to about 2500. Only about 20 percent of that, are expected to be wild. Most of Thailand was built with elephants, and the biggest use of elephants was logging. It wasn’t until 1989, that logging was banned in Thailand. After that period, most of Thailand’s elephants were either released back into the wild or sold to Burma and Laos back into the logging industry. First of all, most of the elephants that were released as now fully domesticated animals ended up dieing, because they were now so dependant on humans for survival.
In addition to those facts, tourism is the number one thing in Thailand. Elephant trekking and rides are at there peak. A lot of the animals at these locations are strongly mistreated, but there are some good places. The biggest thing to look for at the trekking camps is how happy the elephants look. And make sure that you aren’t going to be walking on concrete because that is very bad for the animal. Another popular tourist attraction is baby elephants being taken into downtown Chang Mai and Bangkok for tourist to feed them and take pictures of them. Lek can’t stand this, because elephants sense through there feet and being in a big city is very nerve-raking for them.
Last thing, then on to the park. Elephant paintings… In the last few years, elephant paintings has taken off and is huge. However, for the elephant it is torture. We have learned that over 80 percent of the elephants that paint have died. In order to get the elephants to paint, they are often being beaten and jabbed in the eyes and ears with nails to obey commands. To watch the video’s of this was just horrifying.
So, we went to the nature park and spent a day taking care of the elephants. The village were we were at is mostly volunteer based. There are huts for people from all around the world to come and stay and they do so up to 6 months. Now the park is housed on 100’s and 100’s of acres with a river running through it thanks to a Texas rancher who donated millions of dollars to the project. Lek also has a second park in a more remote and isolated area of Thailand called “Elephant Heaven” where the elephants can fully roam free in a more open environment.
We got to know some of the elephants individually first…
*Hope is an orphan that was brought to the park because her mother died shortly after she was born.
*Another elephant is blind due to having her eyes beaten in. The story goes that she was in the logging industry and pulled large logs up mountains every day. She was pregnant and the day she gave birth was pulling a log up the mountain. Her baby elephant was born and rolled down the mountain killing it. After this incident, the mother refused to work. Because she wouldn’t work, her eyes were beaten until she went blind.
*2 elephants are recovering drug addicts. They were pumped with heroin and opium in order to work for weeks and weeks without sleep.
*Another elephant has half of one of his feet missing due to a land mine.
And on and on and on, the stories go about these elephants.
The park is centered around taking care of the elephants and getting them back to living a normal life in somewhat normal surroundings. After watching some video’s, it was feeding time. Mangos, cantaloupe, banana’s, corn, and watermelon were served to the elephants. We fed them by there trunk and placed some food in there mouth.
We then went down to the river, walking only a few feet away from these 12 foot tall creatures and bathed the animals. We got in the water and through water on there back and brushed off dirt.
Funny thing about these animals, is that the second they get clean, they like to then dust themselves with dirt. So after the bath, they then went straight for the dirt holes. They put on dirt as sun screen and to avoid getting bitten by ticks.
After this was our lunch time. We had a full buffet a food for us, it was delicious. Curry, stir fry, fruits, veggies, rice dishes. YUM!!!
We spent the afternoon just watching the elephants play around. We went out and saw the 2 babies of the park. One was 2 months old and another was 4 months old. Just unbelievable.
It was then time to feed the elephants again. It’s funny cause we didn’t sense this when we first fed them, but the 2nd time the elephants were much more responsive. They let you touch them more, they let you put more food straight into there mouth. After only a 2nd feeding, you begin to work up a kinship with the elephants you are taking care of.
One of the best part of today was when we ran into Lek while we were having the 2nd feeding. My first response to her was to walk up and thank her. Tell her how much good she was doing in the world and by providing just a small portion of hope for these elephants she was preventing them from going on the endangered species list. She happened to be one of the most sincere and straight forward women I have ever met. She told a handful of us story after story about the elephants we were feeding and how they had come to find there way to the park. She also told us a lot more about the Mahouts that take care of these animals. Normally when the elephants are young, one Mahout will adopt the elephants and take care of and help out the elephant for the rest of its life. Lek feels that the elephant should get a say in who is his handler. Therefore if an elephant refusing to listen to one Mahout, she will not allow that Mahout to handle the elephant.
Lek told us a story of a Mahout coming to the park and wanting to help out and work for her. She interviewed the guy on his past history and he seemed to be a good candidate to work at the park. He had no bad past history and seemed to have an overall love for the animals. She then instructed him to go over and feed an elephant right into the mouth. He did so and the elephant absolutely refused to listen to him or except any food out of his hand. He told Lek that the elephant wasn’t hungry and that he would like another elephant. Lek responds that that is crazy, because elephants are always hungry (PS. Wild elephants can eat up to 18 hours a day. They are solely vegetarians.) He tried 2 or 3 more times, and to no avail the elephant refused his commands and didn’t want his food. She called over a volunteer and instructed him to feed the elephant and just like she had thought the elephant excepted food right out of the volunteers hand. So Lek asked the Mahout why this horse refused to listen to him or eat his food, she said the elephant can’t lie. The mahout finally fessed up to a story that had happened all most 12 years earlier. He said, I know of this horse, I use to take care of it when it was younger. One day when it refused to listen to me and obey my commands, I took its pile of shit and through it in his mouth to discipline it.
She was an amazing woman. Following the feeding and talking with Lek, we went back down to the river one last time to wash and spend time with the elephants. Once you have gotten to know how an elephant is, you start to feel like you can trust the elephants. There is a reason that most volunteers come to the park for a month or more. It takes time to earn t he elephants trust. They are very complex animals, but just after spending the day with them, you begin to understand them a little more.
We had an unbelievable day. After that we drove back an hour into Chang Mai. Everyone in the group got cleaned up and we headed out for a traditional Thai dinner. I was told from a local when we were visiting one of the Buddhist temples to go to the Antique House. We arrived at an outdoor restaurant that made me think I was in Hawaii. It was very casually themed and the guy on the mic played James Taylor the whole time. The food was good, if I had to judge I would say it wasn’t one of my favorite Thai meals but still quite good. I did however have Tom Yum Gong soup served to me in a coconut shell. AWESOME!
After that the girls and the guys parted ways. The guys (me not included) headed off to see a traditional Thai boxing fight. Thinking that it was going to be rough and bloody I declined. Instead I went with the girls. We went back to the night bizarre and did some shopping. We stayed till almost midnight and didn’t even get through half of the stalls.The saddest part of the evening was as we were waiting to catch our tut tut home, we turned a corner on the streets of Chang Mai and there was an elephant entertaining tourist. The Muhuot passing out food to little kids and googly-eyed tourist willing to pay him money to play with the elephant. It was a very eye opening day to say the least.
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