Elephant Sanctuary

After many moral discussions and conscience delving we finally decided that as it is one of the must do things in Thailand (and we haven’t done many!) and the Thai culture is so heavily linked to the elephant (not always good though!) we should do something related to them. We’d ruled out elephant trekking as it just seemed wrong, we ruled out lots of elephant centres that just seemed too much like a circus – ‘come see an elephant show where they paint and play football’ ermm no thanks! We finally found a place that Shona thought her friend Clare had previously volunteered at and we both thought it was the best on offer, so went along hoping that it was less of a circus and money making venture like the others!
The park is a none funded rescue centre that employs over 70 staff and relies on daily visitors and as many as 50 paying volunteers at any one time to operate. It is home to 34 elephants with the aim of returning some to wild if and where possible, most of the animals have been rescued from lives of cruelty or from families that can longer afford the up-keep. Some are victims of traffic accidents where the owners take them into the cities to help them beg from tourists, others have been injured by landmines! The elephants are clearly well looked after and are enjoying life again after whatever circumstance bought them here. They are huge animals but remarkably gentle and careful. As a visitor to the centre you get to feed the elephants from a platform under supervision of their Mahout (their carer – each elephant has a mahout) and to splash around in a river with them while they have their daily bath/play time – as well as watching a documentary on the founder of the centre and just observing their daily elephant lives. I don’t think we fully got in to the spirit of it all like some, well mainly screaming excitable girls, but still did our bit handing them bunches of bananas or half a watermelon that they took graciously from you with their trunk or in the river throwing buckets of water at them and giving them a scrub. It was a good day that I am glad we did, after all having a water fight with an elephant is kinda fun but I still came away undecided if its a good or bad thing! There is a fine line between rescuing animals, being able to run a centre like this and it not becoming a big business because tourists are willing to pay to have an up close and personal experience that obviously ordinarily you aren’t going to get! I’m just not sure where that line is. Is it just a petting farm full of 4 tonne elephants or a rescue and return to the wild project?! As in my mind it can’t be both – but it can’t be any of that without paying customers be it volunteers or daily visitors – there’s the catch!?!? But what swung it for us in the end was that the center’s founder seemed to be using any spare money from tourism to benefit the local tribes and communties by delivering much needed medical and school supplies. Oh well, should stop thinking so much! We’ve now watched Indians bath in the ganges and helped bath an elephant, what other bathing experiences await us – definately not my turn to bath as I’ve got months yet before I need another one!?