Elephant kisses…
By far the coolest thing we did in Chiang Mai was go to the Elephant Nature Park.
Which we almost couldn’t do since our guest house told us we only had to book one day in advance…but when we asked them to book for a Monday (it was Saturday) they called someone (who, I have no idea) and that person said it was booked until Thursday. Well, we were going to leave Thursday so we were resigned to the fact that we weren’t going to be able to go and were kicking ourselves for not booking earlier. Luckily, John likes music. So he was looking at this place in the Night Bazaar that had a bunch of “his type” of music
So we were picked up and driven out to this park. And got to feed elephants. We got to feed a very picky baby elephant. They all have their own baskets (since some of the elephants are total hogs and will eat all the fruit). This baby elephant wanted only melon. And then when that was done she wanted bananas. But forget about the pumpkin and pineapple. She was having none of that. Luckily another, bigger, elephant helped her out. The coolest thing though is we both got elephant kisses. The baby took it’s trunk, put it to a cheek and did this vacuum thing with it. SO CUTE! And then we gave them baths. We went into the river with them and splashed water on them and scrubbed them with brushes. Then the elephants got out and proceeded to splash sunscreen on themselves (dirt). And then the teenagers played around by pushing each other into the mud pit.
But the sad and glad thing about this park was the condition of the elephants. There were some sad elephants. Since domestic elephants are considered livestock in Thailand, some of them aren’t treated very well. One lady was blind because she had lost her baby and refused to work. So her owner put her eye out with a slingshot. And when she still refused to work he put the other eye out with a stick. Lek, the woman who started the park (and she is TINY!), saw this elephant running into trees in the forest and asked the mahook what was wrong with the elephant – when he told her she offered to buy the elephant from him. And another elephant pretty much adopted her and now they’re inseparable. Lek has pretty much devoted her life to help elephants. One kind of sad thing you see in Thailand is elephants walking around the streets with their mahook and you can buy sugar cane to feed the elephant. Which sounds kind of innocent except for elephants have really sensitive feet. They can feel vibrations and must feel crazy when they’re in cities. Plus, Thailand is really hot. Hot asphalt can’t be pleasant on anyone’s bare feet! So the park is trying to get enough signatures to stop elephants in the city of Chiang Mai. Anyway, one more sad thing – Lek had a documentary made. It showed some really bad things (like how domestic elephants are trained – put into a cage and poked with sticks/nails for days until they bend their legs how their trainers want them to bend), how some trekking companies treat their elephants, etc. etc. So when it came out she had death threats to herself because it showed a negative light on Thailand, and a baby elephant featured in the movie was killed. It was poisoned because of the documentary.
It was really a fun, informative day. Elephants are like the coolest. They have such personality and…well, they’re just the cutest. I’ll never forget that kiss…
Tags: RTW Trip, Thailand
JohnCin
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