A day with the elephants

This past weekend, I met my friend Anna in Chiang Mai.  It's a 13 hour overnight bus trip there.  Chiang Mai is an awesome area to visit.  But the highlight of the trip was spending the day at Elephant Jungle Sanctuary.  I'm not a huge animal lover (and as a friend recently pointed out I was seriously trying to figure out how to spend the day at the spa rather than going on the safari in Africa...), but it makes me sick to see how terribly animals are treated for the sake of tourist getting to ride them or take a picture with them.  There are many, many unethical elephant and tiger camps all over Thailand.  The animals are held in cages, drugged, and beaten all for the sake of money.  I have not and will not pay money to any of those camps. There are a few different ethical elephant sanctuaries in the Chiang Mai area.  When we started planning this trip, Anna and I both mentioned we wanted to visit one.  She had family friends that had just visited Elephant Jungle Sanctuary.  We were glad to see a spot for the day that worked best for us!

A songtaew driver picked us up at our hotel at 8:00 am on Friday morning.  We picked up two more groups of people and headed about 2 hours away into the jungle.  In a songtaew there are benches on the side of the bed of a pick up truck, so you are not facing forward.  That mixed with the curves and the hills to get to the jungle were not good for motion sickness.  I was very thankful that we had opted for a rather low key night the night before, because I'm sure it would have been so much worse if I was also hungover!  

Once we finally arrived at sanctuary, we were greeted by a family of 5 elephants.  There were about 40 people in total and we were split into two groups.  We were given ponchos to wear that are native to the Karen tribe that lives in the area.  We started off just hanging out with those five elephants.  All the elephants were females.  There was a small 5 month old baby that was so cute.  And a couple of teenaged year old ones and a 72 year old elephant.  They were just walking around and we had bananas and sugar canes to feed them.  They knew exactly where we were keeping the sugar canes in our pockets of the ponchos too!  They'd come up and their trunks would go right for the pocket!  It was funny how some of them were picky about their sugar cane.  They would curl them up in their trucks and if it wasn't the exact piece they wanted, they'd let it drop to the ground.  

After spending about 20 minutes doing that, we walked down a steep path to another group of elephants that were by the river.  We had to walk over a long, bamboo bridge to get to the other side of the river.  When we got to the other side, it took me a few seconds to get my bearings and not feel like my legs were going to give out!  We were able to spend 20 minutes or so with this group of elephants and feed them too.

This picture only makes it seem like I'm walking confidently across this bridge!

After that, we went down a path to the spot to eat lunch.  It was in a beautiful location.  We were up above the river and you could hear the water going over the dam.  A little bit farther down was an awesome waterfall.  After eating a traditional Thai lunch, I walked down to get some pictures of the waterfall.  I got lucky and got a shot right as a girl was jumping into it.  As I was walking back, I noticed that there were about 4 men working underneath the structure we'd just been eating lunch at.  As in they were putting brick and mortar around the support legs.  I was glad I saw that AFTER I was done eating!

Once we finished lunch, we were told to change into our bathing suits.  We got to go back down to the water and bath and scrub the elephants.  That's right.  I got into the water with 5 elephants!  It was so much fun to get to see them just laying in the water, all of us splashing water on them, and using brushes to scrub them.  There were a few times that I saw something rather large float by, but I tried to ignore the fact it was elephant dung, and kept telling myself my feet was sinking into sand/mud and definitely wasn't elephant dung that had sunk to the bottom.

Next up was the mud spa.  They led the elephants out of the river, over in to two large mud pits.  And this is the part of the trip that #PrincessBA emerged.  When I first got to Thailand the advice of "say yes to everything" was given.  And I think I've done a fairly good job of taking that advice to heart.  However, I could not do it this time.  I almost felt like I was in the cartoon with an angel and a devil on my shoulder.  As I was standing at the edge of the mud pit, watching all these people spread mud all over the elephants and also the other humans, I kept thinking - just say yes, get in that mud pit and have fun.  Then I'd think but how much of that is mud and how much of that is elephant dung.  Over and over!  I'd get closer and closer to getting in and the thought of that being elephant dung they were flinging around just was too much.  And I did not get in and give the elephants a mud (dung) bath!  

If you look closely, you will see me walking in the direction opposite the mud/dung slinging!

Since most everyone was covered in mud, we then walked back to the waterfall and swam, washed off, and hung out in that beautiful area for a while. Once that was over, we walked back to where we started the day, rinsed off in the shower area, and had some more time to hang out with the elephants and take pics/selfies with them.  Anna and I kept waiting for them to hit us up for donations, explaining how expensive it is to run this, etc.  But they never did.  It was such an amazing day.  You could tell these elephants that are there because they've been rescued from horrible situations are loved and cared for.  There were absolutely zero chains around their feet or the metal hooks that are used to get them to obey.  The animals were able to roam around and come right up to us.  If the trainer did want them to do something different, it was communicated through commands.  When they started 3 years ago, they only had 3 elephants and one camp.  Now there are close to 90 elephants they've rescued and 8 different camps.  People also have the opportunity to spend 1 to 2 nights there or spend a week volunteering.  This has definitely been the coolest experience I've had while in Thailand.