Thailand: Elephants and Ethics

“I booked my trip to Thailand,” I told some friends, months before I would share this news with my parents.

“That’s so cool! You have to ride an elephant while you’re there,” one of them said.

“Oh, I totally will.”

I could just imagine it: photos I’d seen of other friends, and celebrities, perched atop the back of these gentle giants, danced in my head. Who wouldn’t want to ride an elephant?

Since I usually only plan my destinations and lodging ahead of time, I didn’t think about it again until I was actually in Thailand. While on the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, I was talking with Will, and he told me he was planning a visit to Elephant Nature Park. ENP, he told me, was a sanctuary for elephants that had been rescued from abusive situations.

This was when I first realized that the treatment of elephants in Thailand might be less than ideal.

With my decent-but-not-great WiFi, I started to do some research. Here’s are a few things I learned very quickly:

• Elephants’ spines are not strong enough to comfortably bear the weight of humans, and doing so can cause long-term harm.
• Handlers who exploit elephants for tourism will separate them from their families when they are very young; they are tied up for days on end with no interaction and beaten or stabbed with bullhooks.
• This process is called “breaking their spirit” and is meant to make them submissive to their handlers.

I immediately knew that I couldn’t ride an elephant.

So I looked into a visit to Elephant Nature Park. Unfortunately, it was sold out for the next week. I was disappointed, but I was only going to have two and a half days in Chiang Mai, so I tried to accept it. But on the second day, I learned about Elephant Jungle Sanctuary from a brochure in my hostel. At EJS, all the elephants have been rescued from camps around Thailand and given a better life at the sanctuary. After reading more about it, I really wanted to go. But I was supposed to leave the next afternoon.

One of the many perks of traveling alone is the ability to change your plans with a moment’s notice… so I canceled my return train trip to Bangkok, extended my hostel stay, and booked myself a half-day trip to Elephant Jungle Sanctuary. And I bought a cheap swimsuit at the Night Bazaar. The bottoms didn’t really fit, oh well.

EJS offers half-day trips for the morning or afternoon, as well as full days, walks with the elephants, and even overnight trips. I had opted for the half-day afternoon, which was lucky; I was picked up at my hostel at 11 a.m. after returning from a night out at 4:30. 🙂

After picking up several others from their lodging in Chiang Mai — a mixture of tourists from England, Canada, Alaska, and Thailand — we began the roughly 2-hour drive to the jungle, where the elephants were waiting. Our group of 7 joined another small group at Camp 4. The mahouts — elephant caretakers — taught us how to interact with the elephants, what to do and what not to do. They handed out colorful, striped tribal shirts for us to wear. Most importantly, these shirts had huge pockets, which we would fill with small bananas to feed the elephants.

We fed the elephants for a while, and when they went into the giant mud hole, we went in with them. The mahouts explained how to rub mud on their skin to help keep them cool in the hot Thai sun. And- after that, we joined them in the river to rinse off. We splashed them and each other with buckets of water, and the elephants seemed to have fun spraying us with water from their trunks.

Finally, EJS provided us with a dinner of rice, curry, and fruit, which was a really nice touch. We fed the elephants a little bit of sugar cane as a treat, and said our goodbyes. I arrived back in Chiang Mai around 7 p.m., happy, dirty, and exhausted.

My experience at Elephant Jungle Sanctuary was a good one. There was absolutely no riding, and nothing I saw suggested that the elephants were anything less than happy and cared for. With multiple “camps,” this ensures that the same group of elephants are not subjected to constant human interaction. The mahouts were gentle and the elephants seemed to love them.

That being said, I can only speak for the experience I had at the Chiang Mai location. I have recently read a report that the Phuket location may not live up to the standards set by the original. However, it’s hard to know whether that information is reliable. Many of the elephant “sanctuaries” in Thailand are named very similarly, and purposefully done so to create confusion.

If you choose to visit an elephant sanctuary, do your own research and make sure you know what you are signing up for. I would highly recommend Elephant Jungle Sanctuary as well as Elephant Nature Park (based on Will’s experience he shared with me) if you are looking for an ethical option.

One last note — I also appreciated that EJS had a designated photographer. I felt that I could really live in the moment and enjoy my time interacting with the elephants, rather than trying to take photos and capture it all on my phone. (Even though I did take some, of course.) They post all the photos to their Facebook page so you can easily find them later. Sometimes it is hard to put the phone down while traveling. You gotta take the opportunities where you can get them!

 

Did you learn anything about elephant tourism in Thailand? Would you visit an elephant sanctuary? Let me know in the comments!

-Cathy

Originally Published on April 4, 2018.