The Elephant Nature Park...The best place in Thailand

(Note: This is a pretty long entry with a lot of pics)

So I spent the last week at the Elephant Nature Park (http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/index.htm) volunteering and had a blast. I’m covered in bumps, bruises, scratches, and various bug bites but I would happily do it all again. The park was amazing and enlightening…I will never be going to another animal show again after the video’s we were shown of the brutal training methods the elephants go through.

To briefly explain the elephants go through a process which is called The Crush because it crushes the elephants’ spirit. Young elephants are placed in cages which are barely large enough for them to fit in. Then they are held for days on end without food, water, or sleep while they are beaten and brutalized with nails. After they finish The Crush they don’t even recognize their own mothers anymore.

Almost all of the elephants at the Elephant Nature Park went through The Crush before they were rescued by Lek (the owner of the Nature Park). The elephants at this park have been rescued from street begging, illegal logging, legal logging in Burma, breeding programs, landmine accidents, and being orphaned. Most of the Elephants have heartbreaking stories which are only made mildly better by the fact that they are now being given a chance to be ‘free’ and act like a normal elephants.

Lek with Faa Mai

Some of the most famous elephants at the park are Hope, a male elephant who was orphaned as a baby and hand raised by Lek. He is one of the 3 elephants who wasn’t put through The Crush (the other 2 are the babies Faa Mai and Chang Yim).

Hope with his Mahout

Faa Mai playing in the dirt

Jokia, is an elephant who was completely blinded by this Mahout and owner after she lost her child and refused to work. Medo, broke her leg while logging and was then sent into a breeding program, where her spine was dislocated and her hip was broken.

Medo

At the park we were able to learn all about the elephants and we did daily chores to help maintain the park. We started every morning around 7ish with breakfast, usually after a 6am ‘wake-up call’ by the park dogs. Then we started our daily morning chores at 8 o’clock. The morning chores included cleaning the elephants fruit and vegetables (to remove the pesticides), unloading the fruit trucks, shoveling elephant poo, draining the mud pit, and cutting corn (my group didn’t wind up doing this chore but I heard it was A LOT of work). Then we’d have free time to help feed the elephants, eat lunch, and wash the elephants. At 2 o’clock we started working again. We had different chores in the afternoon which included: building columns to keep the elephants in the fields, assisting the vet, or emptying more trucks.

Bella one of the sweetest dogs who lived at the
building where I was sleeping

The baby families heading to a bath

The babies playing in the dirt

One of the Mahouts carving an elephant

So we arrived at the park on Monday and got to do the typical day trip activities. We started by learning some basic safety such as: don’t put your hand in the elephants’ mouths, don’t turn your back on the elephants, and move your ass out of the way if an elephant is coming towards you. Then we went to feed the baby elephant families before lunch. After lunch we went to bathe the elephants in the river. We through buckets of water on them to clean off the dirt only to then follow them to the mud pit where they re-coated themselves in mud. After the day trippers left we did a volunteer orientation where we discovered that there were 3 Rebecca’s, so I decided to go by Apple for the week. At the end of the day we watched the video about how elephants are trained in Thailand before we were given out room assignments. The rooms were about 100times better than anyone expected and I wound up with a view of the elephant baby pens, so I woke up every morning to cute elephants.

The view from my room :D

Tuesday was the first day of chores! I was placed in group B which was assigned the mud pit. We started the day throwing buckets of muddy water out of the pit for 45minutes. After we finally reached the bottom of the pit we wound up having an awesome mud fight, no one walked away without some mud. Then we went off to the river to try to clean up Elephant style! In the afternoon we went on an elephant walk where we got to watch the elephants bathe themselves in the river and take a dirt bath. After the walk we followed Lek to the baby pen and watched her sing a lullaby to Faa Mai.

On Wednesday, group B split in half so half of us went to go clean the elephant food. We scrubbed pumpkins, watermelons, and pineapples. In the afternoon we built the rock columns until about half of the volunteers had to leave to go to an Animals Rights Protest in Bangkok.

The food storage area
(there was a large area behind this as well)

Thursday, we joined together into one group for chores. A few of us went to shovel elephant poo but since the Mahouts had already taken care of most of it we wound up finishing superfast. So, we went to join the rest of the group at veg. cleaning. Right when we finished a pineapple truck showed up so we power-housed through it, pineapples were flying everywhere (and surprisingly almost none of them were missed by the team catching). We then went to the local kindergarten to visit the children. I wound up hula-hooping with one of the girls. When we got back to the park we discovered that a pumpkin truck had shown up…so we started tossing pumpkins off the truck and were able to empty the truck in about 30minutes (which left us about 10minutes to wash up before lunch). After lunch 3 of us went to help the vet treat the elephants. He decided to rename me Better (I don’t think he could pronounce Becki). I got to help him treat Mailai Tong, one of the landmine victims, she’s missing the back portion of her foot which needed to be cleaned and treated with some kind of purple spray.

Fun with the delivery trucks!

Friday was another day of veg, cleaning and emptying another pumpkin truck. We also took a trip up to the local village to go shopping. Lek also sang to Faa Mai again and this time she laid down and started snoring which was adorable.

On Saturday, I decided to mix it up by shoveling Elephant poo instead of scrubbing veg. again. It was a lot harder than on Thursday but it was still fun. Although I did feel useless with the rake, so I traded for one of the pitchforks. In the afternoon, we went out to tie monk cloths around trees to make them sacred, which means that they won’t be cut down. After we got back there was another Elephant walk and a farewell dinner of Northern Thai foods.

Sunday, was sadly our last day at the park. We were only assigned morning chores, which for me was veg. scrubbing. I also helped empty a banana truck, washed and fed the elephants before having to go back to Chiang Mai.
I didn’t want to leave The Elephant Nature Park…I wish I could have stayed forever! I feel in love with all of the elephants.

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