Chaing Mai

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We booked an overnight homestay with a local travel agent that included a full day and a half at a local Elephant training camp. I had originally wanted to visit the Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary that rescues abused and retired elephants, and they do not ride them or make them perform goofy circus acts. Unfortunately the sanctuary was booked for months in advance (which is wonderful but a bummer for us) , so we settled on a small family run camp that came recommended by the agent.

We traveled west of Chaing Mai into the mountains for about an hour and a half to the Chaing Siam Mahout Training School. A Mahout is an elephant trainer, and usually these men stay with the same elephant for it’s entire life, which can be anywhere from 80-100 years. Mahouts usually work in father and son teams ensuring that they can stay with the animal throughout it’s entire life because the bond they form with each other is so great. Elephants are an honored and revered animal in Thailand, and it has been used as a war machine, timber logger, royal transport and a God for the Hindu’s for millennia.

In 1989 logging was outlawed in Thailand, and elephants were used in this industry for centuries harvesting teak and transporting goods. The modern era has made elephants obsolete in this society so tourism is the only answer. In a perfect world all the elephants should be released into the wild and be protected in National Parks, but the elephants are hunted by poachers, and so are the rangers that protect them thanks to the voracious Asian appetite for ivory from their tusks. Also many farmers poach elephants in the wild because they raid their farms and crops, the only livelihood they have.

There are only about 2,000 endangered Asian elephants left in Thailand, 1,000 of which are in captivity. Thai law also requires that elephants are retired at age 61 and released into the wild. Ages are monitored by the gov’t and each elephant is issued a birth and death certificate to keep accurate numbers. Elephants have a similar life timeline as humans, they first attend school at age 3, they reach sexual maturity in their early teens, retire at 61, and die in their 80’s.

Our accommodations at the camp were extremely spartan but the location couldn’t be beat. We were nestled in a mountain valley with a river running through it. We stayed in a bamboo stilt house without electricity, sleeping on a thin mat on the floor with a mosquito net. The family owned 7 elephants, one a 2 year old rambunctious baby. We arrived with a group of a dozen tourists who all left in the early afternoon to go back to Chaing Mai. Once the tourists left we were able to enjoy the company of the elephants alone, spoiling them by feeding them bananas and pineapple rinds. The average cost of $50,000 for feeding an elephant their required 100lbs. of food a day can be quite expensive so tourism is a necessary industry for elephant owners to be able to afford them.

We bathed all the elephants in the stream, scrubbing them down with brushes and buckets. The baby elephant was adorable, rolling and splashing with his mother. We all kept clear of the baby unless he was chained up, as he hasn’t been trained yet. Imagine how a 2 year old child is when they run around the house, imagine that child weighing over 500 lbs and then trying to play with you.

We went on an afternoon ride through the jungle, learning how to ride an elephant bareback. The only time we have rode an elephant was in Nepal on a platform, which is painful to an elephant, especially when loaded down with numerous tourists. Bareback is the ethical way to ride, and also the most nerve-wracking. After the bath my elephant was very itchy as she dried so she took every opportunity to itch herself on every tree and rock alongside the very narrow and steep trail. There were numerous times I thought my leg was going to get crushed on a tree, or I was going to be thrown off her back from 15 feet up, but of course it didn’t happen. To ride an elephant bareback is awe-inspiring, feeling the giant shoulder muscles undulating beneath you. Honestly half the time it didn’t even feel real, and it felt like I was riding a prehistoric creature, or an alien species from Avatar.

We enjoyed an amazing dinner, specially prepared for us by our cook/guide nicknamed “Jackie Chan” because of his uncanny resemblance to an older Jackie Chan. We dined on red curry coconut vegetable soup, with more pineapple for desert whose rinds went straight into the mouth of baby and mama who were chained up 10 feet from us. As far as the chains go, I thought they were somewhat cruel initially, but quickly realized if they were not chained the elephants would either come crashing into our hut begging for food, or disappear into the jungle.

After dinner we sat around a camp fire with a few family members and Jackie sometimes acting as our translator (even though he barely spoke English himself). We learned that the family was Burmese refugees that had moved to this area in the early 90’s escaping the civil war that was raging in Burma. Some of their family moved to the US during this time, and they have us their telephone number and asked us to email a picture of them with us when we got home. We spoke of family, farming and elephants, the most important things in life to these people. A few of the young men went out hunting with rifles that evening, camping out in the jungle in search of game.

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