Elephant Nature Park and Thailand so far :)

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  Chiang Mai, Thailand
Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Helllloooo and greetings from Chiang Mai!!

Thought it time for some travel blog action! :) So if that interests you, read on! :)

Today (Tuesday 17th) I have had an awesome time visiting the Elephant Nature Park.
This park is home to about 30 elephants, who have been rescued from various parts of Thailand and surrounding regions from some very unfortunate situations - including little orphan elephants, and very sadly, a lot of cases of pretty extreme cruelty.

We began the day by going via a market to get fruit for the elephants - understandably, each elephant scoffs down kilos of the stuff daily, but is sure is a lot of fruit when you see it enmasse! Then on arrival at the Park we had a look around and at all the elephants for a bit before it was time to feed them! That was all pretty cool, and lots of fun to watch the elephants interact with each other, and people too :) Some of the 'little' ;) guys were being quite picky, and would take, say, a cucumber from you, but would kinda throw it down and wait for something more interesting like a (whole!) watermelon, or some bananas! :)

Then in the afternoon we helped with bathing the elephants in the river. That was quite the awesome experience and lots of fun! Had to be on the look out for.......floating 'surprises'... haha!! ... but more importantly, moving elephants as it was harder to get out of the way as quick when the big boys and girls decided they were getting up!
It is amazing how hot they get as well! Today wasn't a particularly hot day - rather rainy and overcast to be honest! - but even after 15mins+ in the river, their trunks were hot as!!!

It is quite unbelievable the terrible situations not only these, but a large majority (e.g: almost all!) elephants in Thailand have been through. We saw some documentaries throughout the day which explained the ancient 'methods' used to 'train' elephants, for use as working animals (how they are 'classified' in Thailand, as in along with ox and cows(!) - not the endangered species that the are, interestingly!) or for use in things like trekking, elephant shows and in earlier years (before it was outlawed) logging.

This (disjointed entry haha!) now brings me to the fact I am going on a Hill Tribe tour tomorrow, which also includes elephant riding. Call me naive, but before today, I had no idea the level of cruelty a lot of these animals were put through in being trained to be used for these types of things. I take this opportunity to justify it ;) by thinking back to something that was mentioned today: if these elephants weren't being used for treks, a lot of them may probably left deserted on the streets....but still can't help but think back to the doco's which showed the days of torture and beatings these animals took when being trained (ahem!) for this. ...but I will see both sides I guess!

That is all for now :) perhaps at this rate I'll probably end up doing a post holiday wrap as it's action stations tomorrow and Thursday too!

Rach :)

PS: I have been having all sorts of issues with Facebook and trying to upload photos, but off to give it one more go!!

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