A Day with the elephants

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!