My guide picks me up from the hotel this morning to take me and about 10 others about an hour north outside of town to the elephant sanctuary that people refer to as “elephant heaven.” I’m like a kid on Christmas morning and it feels like my head will explode before we arrive and I ever lay eyes on them. In the van they show us a movie about safety (elephants are really docile until you piss them off - then they can literally crush you with a swipe of their trunk or a kick from one of their massive legs) and another video about the important work this organization, Elephant Nature Park, is doing. A woman named Lek (which I learn means “little” in Thai) started this organization in the late 80’s to rescue elephants from the often tragic fate that befalls them in this country. Thai’s have a very complex relationship with elephants. On the one hand, the elephant is considered a holy and revered animal. One of the most important legacies of a Thai kind is to discover a unique elephant - the last king discovered a while elephant, and the current king discovered the largest elephant ever found. These are things for which they will be remembered. And 90% of Thais are Buddhist so respect for life and never harming another living creature are key tenets of the faith. On the other hand, elephants are expensive to keep. They require lots of land, which is getting hard to come by, and they eat 10% of their body weight in food every day (that’s a few hundred pounds of corn, squash and melons - elephants are vegetarian). In this developing country, elephants must earn their keep. Thais have found a few ways to make keeping elephants profitable and each of them breaks my heart. One way is to use the elephant for tourism. This involves “breaking” the elephant so that it lets tourists ride in little seats strapped to its back. At the park they showed us a video of how elephants are broken and I can’t bring myself to explain it to you. I cried when I saw the recorded footage. Another way is to use elephants for labor. For decades Thailand had a thriving logging trade and elephants were used to haul logs up and down mountains. This one doesn’t seem that unreasonable but many were given amphetamines and worked round the clock. If they faltered they were severely beaten or worse. Thankfully, logging was banned here is 1989 (although it is still alive and well in neighboring Myanmar).
After our hour long journey through the country side we arrived at the elephant park, a vast expanse of land at what seemed like the edge of the world. The place was teeming with activity. About ten other day tours like ours have arrived, another 75 people who’d volunteered to spend a week working at the park were busily moving about, and the staff of over 70 were hard at work preparing food for the elephants, cleaning up after them, tending to their care.
Our guide, a sweet middle aged Thai woman, gave us the schedule. First we’d feed the elephants, then we’d visit the park and learn about how it functions, then we’d bathe them, feed them again, and finally walk around the property with them and sit and watch them graze. The elephants lined right up when they saw us on the platform (they’ve grown very accustomed to their schedule) and while my group started feeding them from our basket of watermelons, I pulled out my camera and started shooting. “Kath-a-leen - behind the red line” my guide said. Five minutes in and I’d already broken the first cardinal rule of safety - stay behind the red line when feeding the elephants to avoid being knocked out by an elephant trunk. This was the first of many times throughout the day that my guide would chide me for something. After the feeding (boy can elephants suck down watermelon) we went out in the fields to learn more about the place. There are 43 elephants on the property. Some were brought here when they were retired from the tourist trade, some were purchased from villagers who could no longer afford to keep them, some worked in logging and were brought here when that was banned, some has stepped on land mines and were brought here for rehab, one was brought here when he was orphaned at 4 months after his mother was shot for eating corn from a farmer’s field. This little guy, named Hope, stole my heart. The guide told us he was found wedged between 2 trees deep in the forest. Apparently he’d run for cover when he heard shots fired and remained there for many days with no food and water. He was wedged in there so tightly they had to cut down the trees to get him out. Now he’s a rambunctious 4 year old, getting into everything and annoying the older elephants with his incessant desire to play.
Next we saw the vet area where resident and visiting elephants are treated. There was a volunteer vet from Canada giving an IV to a baby who’d stepped in a trap 2 years earlier. His leg was still swollen from the trauma but my guide told us he gets along just fine. I was fascinated by this place, so thankful that it exists, and desperate to find a way to contribute. My guide told me about how much things have changed, how much more awareness there is in Thailand of how animals should be treated. Yet the economic realities persist. I was confronted again with a fact I have long understood but never really accepted - that prioritizing animal welfare is a luxury enjoyed only in wealthy countries. In most places, animals are still property, a resource their owners to exploit for survival.
We eventually sat down to lunch with all of the other groups - hundreds of us lined up for an amazing vegetarian buffet. I sat down with an american family from LA, there for a week as volunteers. We discussed what an amazing place this was, and how much respect we had for Lek, one little woman who made this all happen and kept it going for nearly two decades. I was desperate to meet her, but she wasn’t around. Next we sat and watched a documentary film about this place. I was happy to see they were getting publicity (apparently this one aired in the US) but it was a tough film to watch. Learning about the lives of these animals before making it to the park was almost more than I could handle.
Then, the most thrilling part of the day - bath time. It’s important for elephants to bathe daily. If they don’t, they quickly develop skin rashes and sores and other ailments. Here, they are walked to the river by the elephant guides (these guys are amazing - they have built so much trust with these elephants by caring for them so well that those elephants follow them wherever they go) and bathed by the volunteers and visitors. It’s hard to describe the thrill of stepping into the river with those giant animals and splashing them with buckets of water. The young ones shake and paw at the water and make a game of it. The older ones put their ears forward so you don’t forget to wash behind them. After the bath we escort them out to the field where they are fed (again) - this time corn. Did you know that the average elephant spends nearly 18 hours a day chewing? I’m now a fountain of useless elephant factoids. I found a spot in the shade of a tree and laid down and watched them. I decided that if this software thing doesn’t work out, I’m going to move here and work with these amazing creatures.
It’s finally the end of the day and when we get back in the van for the ride back to town I’m sad to be leaving but so thankful for the experience. We had to stop twice in the long driveway to let elephants pass, and a few more times to let dogs pass (I forgot to mention - the center also cares for over 400 rescued dogs). At one stop I watched a woman play with a child on the steps of one of the cabins. She looked familiar - a lot like Lek who I’d seen in the documentary film earlier. As the van began to roll forward our guide turned around and said “Kath-a-leen - that was Lek!” I looked back and put my hands under under my chin, palms together, and gave her my best Thai bow. She caught my eye, smiled, and bowed back.
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