Tag: Thailand

Elani and I spent October 2018 in Chang Mai, Thailand. The weather there is hot and occasionally rainy and the food (particularly the street food) is awesome and spicy. More about all that at some later date. For those of you reading along, I’m still writing about Costa Rica (back in March 2018, I know, I’m behind), but I wanted to write about an amazing experience we had before it fades too much from memory. Specifically, getting to hang out with some amazing elephants.

Elephant tourism is kind of a thing in Thailand. We did our research, and if you go, you definitely should as well, because there are lots of shady operations that treat the elephants poorly. We went with Patara Elephant Farm because they are one of several that are respected for their treatment of the elephants, plus if you wish you can have a go at riding, which sounded pretty awesome.

Around 8am, we got picked up in a van with a bunch of other tourists and driven to the farm in the hills surrounding the city. Our first elephant sighting was actually in the car as some of the locals were riding them along the road, much the same way you’d see folks riding their horses along the road in certain rural parts of the U.S. Then when we arrived, there were three elephants waiting to greet us. A family actually, a mother, father, and their 10 month old baby. We were encouraged by the guides to come say hi and feed them some sugar cane.

I’ve seen elephants at zoos, of course, but never so close and never without any kind of barrier in between us. The first thing I noticed is how huge elephants are. I know this may seem painfully obvious, but when you’re standing next to an animal roughly the size of a delivery truck, it is a hell of a thing. So I started off, like most folks did, by feeding the baby. At around 4 feet tall, he was more in the realm of animals I’d interacted with before. Oddly enough, though, he was the only elephant we were warned about, he was by the accounts of the trainers “a bit naughty” and would try to give you a kick if you stood next to his back legs and evidently would see you pushing on his forehead as an invitation for roughhousing. But he’d happily take pieces of sugar cane from you and mostly was good natured for us. Then it was time to try feeding the mom. She was much more calm and gentle than her son, and when she noticed you had a treat for her, she would calmly hold out her trunk and wait for you to hand her the pieces of cane before bringing it to her mouth and happily crunching away at it. The second thing I noticed, and really the more surprising and ultimately defining thing about them, was their quiet and calm presence. Their eyes were wise and soft and didn’t dart about like most mammals (including humans) but calmly and evenly surveyed their surroundings.

Then it was time to learn a little about the farm and its mission. Patara isn’t just a tour operator, they provide a home for 66 elephants, some of whom had owners that died or couldn’t take care of them anymore, some rescued from places like the circus, and a few young’uns  born at the farm. It also provides a chance for some Thai to learn and practice elephant handing which has a long tradition in Thailand (elephants being used for logging and agriculture). Part of the tour was that we would be paired with an elephant and would be working with them for the day, which was a great way to get to know the elephant better and learn a little of what the tradition of working with elephants was like. Then we were given a traditional shirt to wear (the fabulous pink poncho you’ll see me in the photos – not my first choice of colors) and we walked off to meet our elephants.

My elephant was a 30 year old female named Bon Tong (yeah, I’m probably not getting the spelling right), who was calm, if a little distractible, with beautiful gray eyes. She was also – I suspect this was the primary reason for her distractibility – the mother of a 2 year old elephant named Mah. She wasn’t an overly nervous mom, and more often than not “little” Mah was off playing with the other younger elephants, but I’m sure there was a bit of attention always on her. Elani, for better or worse, was assigned to one of more difficult customers, Hnung, a rambunctious 10 year old adolescent male.

The first thing we did when meeting our elephants was to feed them. The trainers working with us gave everyone a basket of bananas (a favorite) and told us the command (Bon, in case you’re wondering) to have the elephants lift their trunks so we could feed them. While I was feeding Bon Tong, little Mah snuck up and stole bananas out of the basket. Oh well, Bon Tong didn’t seem to mind, I suppose sharing your bananas is just part of being a mom. Then we had a little time to take a few photos and have a wander around with our new buddies while they continued their lunch with a healthy ration of grass.

After a short break, it was time to learn to ride. This was I must say the most exciting and (as is frequently the case with the exciting bits) scariest part of the whole day. We were riding bareback, and the only thing the elephants wore was a rope around them just behind their front legs with a loop to hold on to. Getting up was the first challenge, the elephants obligingly bent up their front leg to make a step, but the rest was up to you (with a bit of help from the trainer). The top of the ear and the rope were pretty good hand holds, but getting on top of an 8 foot tall elephant requires a bit of skill (that I don’t have) to do gracefully.  But I managed, and then the next challenge was getting seated. We were riding like the trainers, sitting on the top of the head or neck with our knees on the tops of their ears. I had one hand on the top of the head and the other grabbing the rope behind me, which all felt pretty solid until Bon Tong started moving. I had imaged that, with them being so large, sitting on an elephant would be pretty easy, and that was not the case. The head and neck are probably the part of an animal that move the most, especially when the head is also what that animal’s primary appendage is attached to.

Elephants like to eat. In fact they spend about 18 hours day eating, which makes sense considering that they need to consume 10% of their considerable body weight a day. This means that on the 30 minute trek from the main farm to the river where we were headed, there would be some snacking. Not a problem as such, but as I mentioned, that means grabbing and tearing with the trunk and head and the head is what I’m sitting on. You can probably imaging that that makes for a bit of a rough ride. At one point, Bon Tong found a sugar cane that looked like a good snack and reached down, got a good grip, and gave it solid yank to pull it up. The problem for me was that she was already on a downhill slope so reaching down meant I was shifted forward, than she tucked her ears and pulled up and to the side with her whole head. So that meant that in rather quick succession, I had the surface I was perched on learned forward, my knee rests (tops of the ears) retracted, then tipped back and to the side. Somehow I managed not to come unseated. The whole event was surprising to say the least. Bon Tong was a bit better behaved after that, and we made it to the river without any other good opportunities for falling off.

After dismounting (the elephant kneels and bends its head forward and you slide forward and hop down) it was time for a rest for us and the elephants. I passed by Bon Tong on the way to the little lunch hut and she noticed me and reached out her trunk, so I put out my hand and she tapped lightly tapped me on the palm. I’m not sure exactly what it meant, but I think after a bit of stressful ride (her dealing with an inexperienced rider squirming around on the back of her neck and me dealing with being pitched around and almost off of an elephant distracted by snacking) she was saying, “we’re cool.”

Then us humans got our lunch and a chance to rest, and the elephants got a chance to play in the river and relax. After that, it was bath time. We all went down to the river and were given buckets and brushes, then it was time to get to work. I’m pretty sure this was the elephant’s favorite part. I scrubbed away with a stiff brush while the trainer helped by throwing buckets of water on Bon Tong. Like cleaning anything, with an elephant you start with the top, which meant a bit of climbing:

Then, of course, it was time for the sides:

After a good scrubbing, it was time for the obligatory photo session. Was I surprised when after being lined up for a photo in front of an elephant that I got sprayed with water? Not really. But it is a cute photo, and all in all good clean fun – get it clean, because of the water? Har har har. Anyways, here’s the picture:

After that, we had another short ride, and then it was time to say goodbye to our elephants. Everyone dismounted, there was a bit of time to chill out, and then the trainers hopped on (much more gracefully then I could manage, I must say) and rode off.

Getting to interact with elephants was a truly amazing experience. On the surface, just being around something that weighs roughly the same as two SUVs is pretty amazing. But what stuck with me the most was their calm, aware presences and how even after spending a few hours with them, it was clear that they have very deep and complex personalities, and the wise, knowing look that is unmistakable in their eyes. Getting to spend time with elephants was a truly remarkable experience and definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far.