November 8 – Elephant Nature Park, Thailand

I’m a bit stumped. I’ve been putting off writing about our experience at The Elephant Nature Park for a week now. I guess I feel it will be too hard for my words to do it justice. The park had a huge impact on all of us and I’m sure will remain one of the top trip highlights. Regardless, I will forge ahead hoping the thoughts and photos won’t bore you to tears and will at least act as a tool to help jog our memory down the road.

The Elephant Nature Park and Elephant Nature Foundation is owned and operated by a Thai woman named Lek. The Nature Park provides a home for 34 rescued Asian elephants, about 50 rescued street dogs, multiple rescued cats, buffalo, cows and one pony.

The Nature Park’s mission is to save the Asian elephant from extinction and give domestic elephants a life worth living by preserving habitat and increasing awareness of humane treatment practices. Phew. However, Lek’s compassion for animals is definitely not limited to elephants…hence the dogs, cats and others.

The Asian elephant has been facing unimaginable challenges for a very long time; decreasing habitat, unfair treatment while being trained for the tourism industry and low survival rate. Logging was banned in Thailand back in 1989 leaving thousands of elephants out of work. The solution for most elephant owners is tourism. The elephants are in circus shows, giving tourist rides, street begging and forced breeding programs to keep the numbers up. Unfortunately, for hundreds of years, mahouts (elephant trainers and handlers) have used intense brutality with hooks, chains and knives to train their elephants and force them to breed. The footage of this process is enough to break even a coldest person’s heart. Tourists value unique entertainment. We want to see an elephant up close, ride one or see a circus show. From the outside looking in, the elephants look happy enough – what do we know? What we don’t know is what it took to get the elephants there and the conditions they live in once the show is over. I don’t think any of us would see an elephant on the streets of Bangkok with a street beggar and feel good about it. It is just so completely unnatural.

So Lek raises money and awareness for elephants. She is tiny, passionate and incredibly smart. Her presence is undeniable. She purchased the park land to provide a habitat and slowly, she buys elephants in need and brings them to the park to live. Most of the elephants have very sad stories to hear. Many of them have visible disabilities and mental illness from the brutality. All of them are gorgeous and have the most incredible personalities. I don’t think any of us knew how human-like elephants are. They have complex family like relationships, obvious personalities, social systems, routines, fabulous memories and despite their size can navigate even the tiniest chore despite no opposable thumbs. Buying an elephant in Thailand is complex and expensive. The elephants themselves represent power and wealth to their owners. How they are treated by their mahouts is steeped in history and tradition. Lek must tread very lightly. She has made incredible progress over the years but the politics of her process is a daily struggle and she must weave her way through carefully so all her work does not become unraveled. The elephants at the park are given as close to a natural habitat as possible. They are still domestic animals so they each have a mahout (practicing humane training and treatment without hooks) and rest in shelters overnight. During the day they have acres of land and grass to wander, a river to bathe in and more than enough food for a healthy existence. An elephant needs to eat approximately 10% of its body weight every day. Ultimately Lek would like to see every elephant released back into the wild and there be no need for her park but again, the task is huge and the process is slow.

To assist her work, Lek has created volunteer and day visitor programs. These happy volunteers and day visitors leave the camp much better educated about the Asian elephant and hopefully spreading the word around the world. She has many other programs; community outreach education, vet outreach programs and is currently trying to help people in Surin develop a similar park in the heart of where many of the Thai and Burmese elephants and mahouts come from. We went to the Nature Park as “volunteers” for a week. In exchange for about $350 ea. we were given a comfortable bed in a lovely traditional Thai bamboo hut, amazing food, a work schedule and of course, and chance to get up close and personal with the elephants while doing chores. We were lucky to be part of a really fun group of 37 volunteers from a huge variety of age, background and reasons for being there. Of course there were no other children. But it seems Sadie & Anna have both found it increasingly comfortable to socialize with anyone we meet, regardless of age (and as long as they are not too hot or tired).
Our typical day consisted of morning chores, morning projects, lunch, afternoon project, dinner and usually a specially planned evening activity. The chores and projects were all centered on caring for the elephants and basic park maintenance. What did we do? Well, we did it all; shoveling mountains of elephant poo, cutting corn and grass for food (yes Sadie & Anna both wielded a machete to do this chore), washing hundreds of pounds of vegetables and fruit for them to eat, chopping sugar cane (more elephant food), cleaning the mud pit, varnishing the huts, repairing a fence, building a shelf (for the elephant kitchen so it can have music), watering the gardens, shoveling sand into the shelters, unloading hundreds of pounds of vegetables and fruit from delivery…just to name a few. Here are some of the less chore-like things we were privileged to do; feed the elephants, help bathe them in the river (like scrub them with brushes and splash buckets of water on them), wander the fields and hear their stories from the park staff...but it was ALL great.

Because a volunteer is there for a week, it is inevitable for each person to have some really unique moments with the elephants. Anna and Ron lucked out by being invited into Faar Mai’s shelter (4 mo. old baby girl) and sit with her while she had her nap. Faar Mai’s mother eventually came over and stood right over them, sniffing Faar Mai and guarding them all with her huge body. It was pretty weird watching Anna underneath an adult elephant. But safety is absolute top priority for the park. As volunteers, we always took our cues from the mahouts who ultimately know the personalities and moods of their elephant best. We were also told to have eyes in the back of our heads. A moving elephant is something to always steer clear of, keep to the side! Ra Ra, a recent addition to the park, has still not bonded with the other elephants and chooses instead to hang with people. She is young and naughty giving her mahout a run for his money. The other 33 elephants have divided themselves into 6 family groups, even though they are for the most part unrelated. We are still waiting to hear the news about a new baby. We were hoping all weak the pregnant mom was going to give birth while we were there, but no luck. Ron & Anna even slept one night on a platform beside her shelter, just in case!

The park makes such a huge effort to create a fun atmosphere. It really felt like summer camp. We were welcomed with a special Buddhist ceremony and we celebrated the Yi Peng Festival by releasing lanterns and making our own Krathongs to float down the river. Kratongs are floating lanterns made from banana leaves, flowers, candles and incense you light and release down the river. Buddhists do this to worship the foot print of Buddha on the Nammathani River. The rest of us do it and make a wish, hoping for good luck! Later in the week we divided into smaller groups and left camp with 4 elephants to go up to “Elephant Heaven” for an overnight. Heaven is Lek’s original camp where she lived with her first elephants. It is about a 3 hour walk (elephant pace) down the road, across a river and up into the hills. Up in Heaven the elephants have the night to spend roaming free and graze in the jungle. We slept on bamboo platforms in the rustic shelter up there. Pom and the mahouts made us amazing meals and Pom told us stories around the fire. Pom is Lek’s right hand person who has been with her since the beginning.

And of course The Lady Boy Contest. Remember my observations about fuzzy gender lines here in Thailand? The volunteers were invited to pick any number of their men and dress them up as women for the contest. The 3 day student group joined in as did the mahouts giving us a full panel with about 16 contestants. It was a scream! Ron managed with incredible agility to dodge the duty of being one of the contestants.

While we were at the park a media dust storm brewed up. Lek is always walking a fine line trying to promote change in a positive way which will not cause the government or people of Thailand to “lose face”. Something came up risking her walk on that line. She and her closest allies had to work hard all week to stand up for what they are doing and diffuse the storm. As a group, we all became aware of the issues and how they were being dealt with. We left the park knowing for now, the dust has settled and with even more respect for how Lek is working towards her ultimate goals.

Selfishly, Ron and I watched the girls become absolutely enthralled in every aspect of the Nature Park. They became instantly comfortable and did not wait around for us to do anything. It was so great to see them so independent. Sadie became an expert in the elephant kitchen working beside Lisa to help coordinate the hundreds and hundreds of pounds of elephant food and oversee the dogs. Lisa was also the resident dog expert. Anna became especially attracted to baby Faar Mai and whenever we could not find her, we knew to look in Faar Mai’s shelter. Taking your kids out of their regular routine at home to go traveling is not easy. There have been more than a few times when one or both of them are having a rough time and we wonder “what the hell are we doing?” But, it is times like at the elephant park and maybe even especially there, we know it has all been worth it. Ron and I made some good friends too. It was nice to hang around some people we were going to see again and again for a whole week. Kind of allowed conversation to get just a little deeper. Many were young travelers so Janet has to brush up on her Facebook skills as it seems that is the way they are all communicating!


What did we take away with us from the week? As a family, we will tell anyone who wants to hear about the Asian elephant so more and more people know what elephants face in Thailand. For the even bigger picture, we are also now committed to try and be more responsible tourists. This means making sure we seek out things to do that don’t hurt local people, animals or the environment. Tourism has become so powerful in emerging countries. In most cases, hosts will provide a service at any cost. I think we should all seek out sustainable tourism.

If you have made it to here, you are either very interested or very patient. Thank you and I promise to be a bit more succinct with the next destination…unless of course, it’s really awesome too!