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Published: January 26th 2010
We decided to devote a day and a pile of money to go to an Elephant preserve. The Elephant Nature Park came highly recommended by a number of different people so what did we do? We allowed ourselves to be talked out of the Elephant Nature Park by the guy running our guesthouse who said that this other place was just as good, allowed you more contact with the elephants and only took half the people per day per elephant which made it a more intimate sort of deal.
Right. So into the minivan we went with about 12 other people and headed off into the countryside to the Baan Chang Elephant Park. We were greeted by the owner who was up front about saying that his was a smaller park, he wasn’t able to allow the elephants to ‘run free’ as they would destroy his property, and ever y property around him. Fair enough. I can sympathize with that since when the neighbor’s cows come invade our property we tend to lose quite a bit of hard-earned foliage (not you Ernie, that other neighbor’s cows to our west). He also emphasized that this was ‘not the best way for
elephants to live but way better than some of the other alternatives.’ OK, we’re willing to consider that too. So far so good. To care for an elephant isn’t cheap of course so he runs this camp to let people hang out with the elephants, learn a few commands, and go for a short trail ride.
Now, the Elephant Nature Park, from what I understand, doesn’t do any elephant riding. It is a hands on place without actually putting the elephants to work in any way. We didn’t need to do an elephant ride - it is a nice enough experience to be among them and learn about them. I don’t believe that riding an elephant is necessarily a bad thing - they are much like horses, working animals that are trained to do certain things. Like horses or any animal they deserve respect and good treatment. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not romanticizing the whole thing thinking that an elephant is being tortured by carrying someone on its back, especially bareback as was our ride.
After a morning spent learning how to get on and off of the elephant and the commands to turn
left and right and, oh boy, this is the fun part, how to use THE HOOK (which I suppose is the elephant equivalent to a crop or spurs but in the hands of a cruel person is a weapon). We could have entirely done without the training session. It was for us not for the elephants and it was just a bunch of commands shouted improperly and tourists pretending that the elephants might actually be listening. They only have ears for their mahouts.
So let’s get to my primary problem with this place - the mahouts.
Mahouts are the people in charge of each elephant. At Baan Chang it is a posse of young Thai kids in their early 20s I’d guess. The entire day they were unprofessional, posturing, aggravating punks that I wanted to whack with a hook. Any time one of the staff members was trying to talk they’d all be standing in a group making a bunch of noise so that it was all unintelligible. Instead of presenting a professional image they seemed more interested in harassing each other and the elephants in a way that seemed to be showing off to the people that
had come to the camp. One of them in particular seemed to take great joy in coming at his elephant in a threatening manner to make it flinch. What an asshole.
So I’m writing this as a bit of a review as well so if you have found your way to this page because you did a search on Baan Chang Elephant Park I will say that the owner SEEMS to have good intentions but he needs to do something about these guys working for him. They put a TERRIBLE taste in our mouths and left us feeling really stupid about having been talked out of our original plan. I don’t believe the elephants are necessarily mistreated, I don’t believe that it is a bad place - indeed the other people in the group didn’t seem to be as bothered as we were. It was an interesting day and the ride through the forest was nice. It gives you a good appreciation for how an elephant’s skin feels when it rubs relentlessly against your leg for an hour. It’s also quite lovely when the elephant exhales violently through its trunk blowing snot all over you from head to toe.
I wish I had limitless money and time so that we could go to the Elephant Nature Park and compare notes. On the way back to town in the minivan I asked a young couple sitting behind us what they had thought of the whole experience because I wondered if we were being unfairly grumpy about the whole thing but they also made comments about the mahouts being unprofessional and acting like jerks. So it wasn’t just us.
After returning to Chiang Mai we got ready to head out to the Sunday Walking Street. What a spectacle! It was similar to the Anusan market only it was a few streets in the city shut down for a market. Thousands of vendors, street music every 50 feet, whole streets and areas devoted entirely to colorful and otherworldly foods - everything from exquisite sushi laid out on trays for 10 baht a piece (30 cents) to huge cauldrons of curries, friend spring rolls on a stick, pan fried coconut patties (so yummy), a huge black gelatinous ball of ‘vegetable jelly’ that is scraped off into a bowl and served with sugar (didn’t try that one though I was curious)…egg
omelets cooked in banana leaf boats over open flames, deep fried rice balls on a stick…it really was a food spectacle.
At the sushi table we met expat Bill. I asked him if the sushi was to be trusted and he very flamboyantly said ‘OH YES! I’ve been coming here every Sunday forEVER and no problems. But you MUST watch out for that horrid custardy stuff they serve on a stick - avoid that at all costs because it sits in the sun all day.’ He was hilarious.
Made us feel better to try away so we wandered the carts and sampled a lovely variety of the food. Dinner ended up costing about $2 for both of us that night. Back in the market the people, oh lord PEOPLE everywhere. Rivers of people shuffling their way up and down the mile-long main drag. It really was something to be experienced. It is a Thai event, the Sunday walking street and the whole city it seems congregates there. We ran into Bill again and enjoyed a lengthy conversation about his life in Chiang Mai and had a good laugh about some of Thailand’s oddities. He, having lived here a
while, was a wealth of information about what to do in and around the city. We told him we were headed up to Pai in the morning and he rolled his eyes and said ‘oh you’re going to LOVE it for about 6 hours and then be BORED STIFF. There is simply NOTHING to do there.’ Bill is a city person. We invited him to come have a drink with us but he begged off to go ‘buy lamps’ which he does often he said to offset the ‘horrid Thai habit of using overhead fluorescent lighting.’ ‘They all make fun of me for having lamps but I do it anyway’ he said. He was a riot. He directed us to go down to his favorite watering hole, The Writer’s Bar just down the street.
It was a gem, a tiny place fronted by tables overlooking the market and its people-watching opportunities with a cozy bar and sitting area in the back surrounded by nice old books in glass-covered bookcases.
There we met Tong, the owner. We told her that the big American guy Bill had sent us her way. She lit up with a big smile and showed us
the beautiful painting Bill had bought to hang in the bar. Tong’s husband is a writer (as was Bill in his former life) so the two had made a quick connection. Another guy bellied up to the bar, Jeff, from north of Tillamook, OR. We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening talking with him about farming in Oregon, politics in the US and the places he’d been while in Thailand.
We pulled into the main temple along the market for a breather and immediately became distracted by what appeared to be Thai Elvis snoozing away in front of the temple door. Then a kid with a plastic (I’m assuming) machine gun started dancing around the inside of the temple while the monk was doing his incantation. This kid was having a GRAND old time waving his gun around and pretending to shoot everyone. No one batted an eye and I chalked it up to one more way the Buddhists are tolerant of just about anything.
It was a long rich day of things we normally just don’t experience. It hasn’t been hard to fall asleep at night on this trip and we’re usually out cold by a fairly embarrassing
hour.
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michael
non-member comment
Great post!!
If you like animal tours, rent "The Cove" when you return state side.