Today is our big outing: The Elephant Rescue Park. We had debated on whether to do this again, and finally decided, sure, why not? Then it just became a matter of finding the right park to visit. There are so many scammer parks that don’t really take all that good care of the elephants around here. You have to be careful which ones you choose to visit. We have already been to the Elephant Nature Park, which was a wonderful experience, so we wanted to go somewhere different. The Elephant Rescue Park sounded like a perfect choice: local, one man who started it in 2015 to provide a home for rescued and abused elephants. Yep. Up our alley. We reserved our spot for a full day tour and scheduled our pick up for this morning.

We were a little leery of having the driver try to find us down our soi, which in hind sight is probably not an issue, so we arranged the pick up for in front of Wako Bake on the main Propokklao road. Right on schedule Sam, our driver, showed up, greeting us warmly and taking us into the van down the street. We’re the first pick up so we “get our choice of seats.” LOL. Turns out the next pick up is off our soi, so Sam drives right past our house anyway! But regardless, gives us a couple more minutes to chat and get to know him. Sam is a great guy – he’s originally from Chiang Rai, moved down here years ago to work in the tourism industry to make money. He started out as a driver for a tour company, but then when and his friend (who they call Kid, which I got from the website because Sam only called him the “founder”) called him to work at the Elephant park, and he’s been there ever since. He knew Kid when they were both at school for Monks at Chedi Luang here in Chiang Mai. Kid was the one who actually taught Sam English. Very long and sweet history there – that made us even happier we chose this park.

We picked up 8 others, a honeymooning couple from Boston, 2 younger German guys and a family with 2 young boys (half Chinese, half American, living in Korea). Then spent the next hour’s drive listening to Sam tell us all about the areas we were driving through and about the park we would soon be visiting. Arriving on the property, it was nothing like the big established parks, this was so local, so Thai. Totally cool, and totally amazing. We were shown to the bathrooms, where there were also showers for later, then given our uniforms to change into later. Our first stop was one of the houses where we would learn all about the park and the elephants. We all filed in, only to find more people there – or I should really say more children. There were 9 additional kids already there and 4 adults. Uh huh. One family had 7 kids, the oldest of which was 9. You do the math. There was another guy with the family who we never could figure out – was he the brother? A nanny? A child from a very early first marriage? Who knows. They were all American, Military, stationed in Korea. The other family was a single mother with a very sick 12 year old girl and an 8 or 9 year old boy, Australian. Plus the 2 kids in our van? 11 total. Why am I not feeling the warm and snugglies?

And so it begins. As it turns out Sam is more than just a driver, he is our guide for the day along with Wee, an absolutely adorable guy about 30 years old with the best personality. They take us through our schedule for the day, then show us pictures of all the elephants and tell us about each – there are only 8 on the property, one died because they couldn’t save her in time.  We learned all their names (yeah, like I can remember them now!) and what they were doing when they were saved. A couple were logging, one was being used as a “taxi,” one was in the circus (and still acts like it, begging for food and doing tricks with her trunk).  One is really old and hurt (from logging) and she can’t go out into the hillside but stays on flat ground. Sam and Wee also give us info on elephants in general, Asian elephants in particular and info about the park and the “founder.” (Which I think is cute how they refer to him that way at all times!)

They also tell us the story of the park, which is just so wonderful. Kid – the founder – worked as a tour guide and had visited other parks where elephants were not well taken care of. He decided that it would be his mission to try to help elephants and give them a good home. He started by taking care of other people’s elephants, taking them in when they were sick, etc.  But once the elephants became better, he didn’t want to see them go back to the hurtful work that put them there in the first place so he started this park to rescue the elephants permanently.  He doesn’t rent them, but actually buys them from their owners (the owners won’t just give them to him out of the kindness of their hearts), and each elephant costs between $60-80,000 USD.  They do this all on donations and us tourists visiting the park.

It is a really small place, not like the other parks which are huge and have massive amounts of tourists visit.  As I said, this gives you a true Thai feeling – sort of ramshackle (and while “ramshackle” is the best word, that doesn’t mean dirty or old – everything is spotless, the bathrooms modern and up to date. It’s just, well, Thai. That’s the best way to describe it!), out in the open, but so caring and sweet, and as Kid says, from the heart. 

Of course the kids are asking questions and participating and Sam and Wee do a good job of trying to manage them and making the presentation more geared toward them. After the lesson, we all go to the changing room to change into our uniforms, which are essentially these monstrous pants you have to tie just right or they fall off (elephant pants, excuse the pun), the cute little shirt and rubber boots that we get outside. Once geared up….

… our first task – make the elephant’s vitamin balls from grain, tamarind, bananas and other things. The kids take care of that – we don’t stand a chance of getting near the mortar and pestles, which is fine, let them get a little of that pent up energy out. The guys go off to cut down some banana trees. Once everything is picked and made Sam and Wee give us instructions on how to feed the elephants, how to hold the bananas and where to place the medicine balls.

Chores complete, we then all trooped out to the old elephant on the flatland to feed her. We were able to touch her and get close and hug her (well, if the kids weren’t there, the adults might have stood a chance to do it, but….enough of my rant), because she is old and doesn’t move much and will accept the attention. The others won’t, so we have to be more careful and respectful of them.

I got to at least feed her a medicine ball, which I put in her trunk, but then she grabbed my hand, and oh boy! The strength! Definitely have to be careful how you hand the food out – Sam and Wee weren’t kidding! Totally fun! I’m not going to focus on the brats who were all over the place, getting in the way, never standing back like they were told to do by the guides (not the parents, I might add, they never said a word), and generally making it tough for the 6 childless adults to get anywhere close to the elephant alone. I got some time with her, Ed, pretty much none, but even though we finally gave up altogether we are still trying to find the magic. Although I will document that we continued to play stay away from the hacking, sneezing 12 year old who doesn’t understand hand in front of mouth. Thank God we are outside and she wasn’t in our van! Even though we wear our masks in every closed in situation, I might have had to politely say nope, not going after all!

Anyhow, after the feeding and loving, we went back to the camp for lunch of sautéed vegetables (we’re eating what the elephants eat) and Pad Thai (I don’t think they eat that, but it is sort of omnivore-ish), then back out to the “Mountain” – hillside – to meet the other elephants, feed them and walk with them in the brush. 

Here at least Wee and Sam try to get us adults to at least get some time with the elephants, making sure that we go first to feed them after they all make their way down the hill and into a shed type structure, waiting to be introduced and fed. It’s fun to feed these guys, being careful as noted earlier!

Even here though, the kids swarmed and at the end, you couldn’t even give the elephants the sugar cane, they had so much from the kids shoving food at them. Oh well, it’s an adventure. With that said, then we did venture up into the hillside with the elephants, always watching where the elephants were going and coming. You had to stay 3 to 4 meters away, 2 of the elephants were blind in their left eyes so you had to stay on their right so they could see you, not get too close behind them. Tons of safety rules – well worth remembering! Not that we were out there alone, obviously. Every elephant had a handles and it was never scary, but still. These are elephants – they are huge! And they may mean you no harm but they also don’t know their strength compared to your teeny tiny little human body.

After traipsing through the underbrush, we ended up down at the stream where we could watch the elephants play…

…then walked over to the pond where we were able to wash and scrub the elephants.  Ed decided he didn’t want to get in the water but would serve as our photographer. He also, smartly so, made me stand close enough to be the first one in to wash them – ahead of the kids – so I at least had a couple of minutes with the elephant. 

It ended rather quickly after one of the brats splashed a whole wash bucket full of water on me. But at least I got to do it for a little while and it was really fun. The upside was also that I only got wet up to my shins, so no need for a full shower when we got back to camp!

An added bonus was that a bunch of monks came to visit the elephants while we were there. We found out later when Kid talked to us that these were the monks he studied with at Chedi Luang. They had come out from the city to visit. So special!

After the elephants were done bathing, and walking past – almost through – the shelter where we were gathering our hats and belongings – we had one last photo opp with the elephants. At least here we were actually able to be with the elephants, just us adults. I don’t know how they managed it, but we did finally get decent pictures with the sweet things.

And then we were done. Back up to the changing room, regular clothes donned, into another open air building for snacks of coconut water and Khaotan (my fav!!) as well as Kid coming to talk to us and tell us more about the park, his vision and how much our visit will help fund the elephants here.

The camp photographer is also there – she had an accident with an elephant, but has worked out her fear and is here volunteering to take photos. Kid doesn’t pay her, if we choose to buy our photos for 200 baht per person, that is her pay. She keeps a portion and donates a portion to the park. Even though we weren’t as active in the photo taking as might have possible in other circumstances, 200 baht is still a pittance, and we gladly give her the money – and you will see her pictures throughout this blog post.

And that was the end of our elephant adventure. It was totally fun – but would have been far better had we not had that amount of unruly kids there.  At least the actual idea of the park is a wonderful thing! And we fully support their efforts to save these poor abused animals!

It was an uneventful drive back, Sam dropping us off where he picked us up. We headed back to the house, freshened up, then went in search of dinner. We wanted to get crippy (crispy) fish from one of the restaurants that Micky recommended, Lert Ros, over by Thae Phae gate, but once there we found them closed. No sign, no nothing, only a woman cleaning the grill out front (the grill where they cook the crippy fish). Oh well, maybe another night.

Off we go in search of food, thinking we’ll just head down to the Farang Food place on the moat road – at least I know I can get wine there. But we stumbled upon the Renegade Sports Bar, which also had another bar called Ugo which we think was the main restaurant? We don’t know, we’re confused, but not matter – the menu is great – they have Khao Soi – and they have wine. Win, win!

We sat a at a little table right off the sidewalk and enjoyed an excellent meal of Khao Soi (of course!) and chicken with cashews – as well as San Miguel Lite beer and wine. Perfect find and excellent way to end our very exciting day.