VERA TESCHOW.CA
  • Home
  • About
    • Overview
    • Education & Diplomas
    • Consulting & PR
    • Teaching Experience
    • Workshop Facilitation
    • Volunteer Experience
    • Extra-Curricular Leadership
    • Writing
  • Learn
  • BLOG
  • Contact

A Day with the elephants

12/7/2019

0 Comments

 
Spending a magical day in the jungle with five retired female elephants in Phuket in November was definitely the highlight of our trip to Thailand, and truthfully one of the most touching experiences of my life. Over the past several years, I’ve been following a few wildlife accounts on social media, but there is something quite enchanting about experiencing these beautiful giants up close, especially in the context of a retirement sanctuary.

Anyone visiting Thailand is likely familiar with the significance of elephants in Thai history and culture. What many people don’t realize, however, is the complexity of Thai elephants’ history of abuse.
Picture
In the past, elephants were used in the logging industry, as well as for riding camps and circuses. Although the former is basically illegal now, many elephants are still used for the latter two purposes. Rather than suddenly become unemployed overnight, many who owned elephants in the logging industry opened riding camps, where the creatures continue to be abused so that tourists can get their instagram shots atop an elephant.

More recently, pressure has been mounting to dismount the elephants. With the resulting decrease in riding camps has come an increase in “sanctuaries”, where in many cases volunteers pay to spend a day “helping” the elephants - this consists mainly of feeding them, walking them and bathing them with mud. The latter two activities are particularly intimate and not really appropriate for wild animals. Research shows that elephants rehabilitated successfully and released into the wild choose to move further from humans over time. Also, the endless bathing activities with new groups of noisy strangers can prove stressful to these intelligent and highly social (amongst themselves) creatures. Moreover, many so-called sanctuaries, it has been found, still use questionable “training” methods in order to ingratiate themselves with human visitors, most of whom remain woefully misinformed when it comes to elephant rescue.

It’s tough, therefore, for those traveling to Thailand and who want to spend time with these majestic creatures in a humane way, to know where to begin. And many tourists, it seems, do little to no research before embarking on their elephant adventure.
We did some research; at least, we knew enough to avoid the riding camps.

We selected from online an outfit that seemed to have very little to no physical interaction with the elephants, one that focused, rather, on education and delicious vegetarian food. The program offered much observation and learning about the elephants; we even feed them a few times, and since we had booked a full-day experience, we were treated to an extended buffet lunch followed by a cozy nap in our own private “treehouse” overlooking a little lake.
Picture
The Phuket Elephant Sanctuary is a 3-year-old ecological park in Pa Klock, Phuket. Located on 30 acres of largely forested land with several water sources, it is currently home to five female elephants who have been rescued (purchased) from previous places of employment ranging from illegal logging, to riding camps, to begging. In all cases, these elephants were mistreated in their pre-sanctuary life, and showed signs of physical and/or emotional distress.
The sanctuary’s founder, formerly himself a trekking camp owner, was inspired to take a new approach to elephant tourism when he retired a physically disabled elephant to Lek Chailert’s Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai. Chailert became somewhat of a mentor to him as he developed his own park in Phuket.

The Phuket Elephant Sanctuary takes a largely “observation-only” approach, though we were permitted and encouraged to feed the elephants twice during our visit.
They really do seem to take more of a rehabilitative and elephant-focused retirement approach, however; in addition to hydrotherapy (which two of the more physically disabled elephants were engaging in while we visited), there are a number of streams and ponds on the property that the elephants can bathe in - without a slew of tourists joining them!
Picture
In the morning, we watched an informative video about elephant tourism in Thailand generally and Phuket in particular.

After meandering around part of the property observing the elephants and their mahouds at some distance, we came back to the main building for a tasty vegetarian buffet, followed by some free time lounging about in the treehouse.

After lunch, it was time to go for a hike in the jungle to pick some bamboo and banana leaves for one of the older elephants, who was not yet spending much time outside her large stockade, on account of her anxiety and hostility towards other elephants and people.
Picture
We learned about elephant communication, as well as what they like to eat. One interesting thing we learned was that the mahouds who came from Myanmar (Burma), as several of them did, had to learn at least some Thai, since the elephants knew only Thai from their previous decades of interaction with humans!

Then the three of us headed out to the jungle with our two guides to collect browse.
Along the way, we passed by two elephants wandering about with their mahouds, and also learned about the rubber tree forests that were being tapped to make latex products.
Then we took a short break to enjoy some refreshing water that had been infused with banyan leaves, a welcome treat on such a hot and sweaty day!

After hiking back with our treasures, we unpacked for the recipent’s mahoud to sort and feed the elephant. Then we moved back to the main building to prepare the afternoon “snack” for the elephants (a large basket of bananas, melon and other fruit that would be fed to them by the next group of tourists).

We also made “rice balls”, which consisted of rice, squash, bananas and some sort of nutritional supplement, mashed together and formed into balls, which we were later able to feed two of the elephants with no teeth!

There is really something quite entrancing about watching these giants with their long trunks rustling about. They are big and move slowly, and yet they seem so graceful, somehow.

Spending a day at the Phuket Elephant Sanctuary in Paklok brought with it many treasured memories, and not once did I feel like I needed to be in the water with them bathing together to get a full appreciation of these magnificent creatures!
Picture
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    About Vera...

    Vera & her Sons, April 2021
    After writing for several teacher and multiple birth publications, including ETFO's Voice Magazine, Multiple Moments, and the Bulletwin, Vera turned her written attention to prolific blogging for some years, including BiB,  "Learn to Fly with Vera!"  and SMARTbansho .  In 2014, Homeschooling 4 was her travel blog in Argentina.  She now spends more time on her Instagram (@schalgzeug_usw)  than her blog (pictures are worth a thousand words?!) and moderates several Facebook groups in Canada and Mexico.

    LIKE WHAT YOU'RE READING?? Consider sending a gift to support our Little Free Library and other projects: bit.ly/VeraList
    DISCLAIMER
    The views expressed on this blog are the views of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the perspectives of her family members or the position of her employer on the the issues she blogs about.  These posts are intended to share resources, document family life, and encourage critical thought on a variety of subjects.  They are not intended to cause harm to any individual or member of any group. By reading this blog and viewing this site, you agree to not hold Vera liable for any harm done by views expressed in this blog.
    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Argentina 2013
    COVID 19
    COVID-19
    Cycling
    Family
    Flying
    Geocaching
    Honduras 2011
    Lakeshore
    Lgbtq
    Math Eyes
    Music
    Other Stuff
    Prince Edward Island
    Teaching And Learning
    Teaching-and-learning
    Travel

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    June 2025
    November 2024
    June 2024
    December 2023
    August 2023
    August 2022
    March 2022
    January 2021
    September 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010

Vera C. Teschow, OCT, M.Ed., MOT
Toronto, ON & St Peter's Harbour, PE
www.verateschow.ca 2023
Photos from Sean MacEntee, Studio Paars, Bengt Nyman, zeevveez, GoodNCrazy, CJS*64, Accretion Disc, CharlesLam, Courtney Dirks, CJS*64 "Man with a camera", Accretion Disc, Bobolink, Ian Muttoo, BioDivLibrary, Alaskan Dude, IsabelleAcatauassu, runran, Transformer18, jglsongs, Create For Animal Rights, david_shankbone, Paul J Coles, foilman, Newport Geographic, Photo Everywhere, kevin dooley, Claudio , Alex Guibord, Tscherno, f_mafra, Terry Madeley, musee de l'horlogerie, BobMacInnes, wwarby, jonathangarcia, amboo who?, chimothy27, Elin B, cliff1066™, Grzegorz Łobiński, Rennett Stowe, Farhill, Phil Manker, Guitarfool5931, airguy1988, dierk schaefer, Rob Stemple, katerha, StockMonkeys.com, Ramotionblog, andrewk3715, charlywkarl, AJC1, rachel_titiriga, chaz jackson, haven't the slightest, paweesit