The Lizza Blog: Elephant Nature Foundation

Yesterday we woke up bright and early, again before dawn, to get ready and have breakfast before the guide from the Elephant Nature Foundation picked us up for our day at the park. Around 7:30am, a Thai who introduced himself as "Brad" arrived to collect us. We were sort of expecting another truck with bench seats in the bed but he was in a nice van, and most importantly, an air-conditioned van. We drove into the city of Chiang Mai and picked up seven more passengers - three Aussies, two Brits, a young Thai girl and another girl (not sure where she was from). We started our 1.5 hour journey towards the mountains of northern Thailand. Brad then began talking to the group to explain a little about himself and the Foundation. He began by saying, "I am Brad... Pitt. I am a legend." We immediately knew he would be good entertainment for the day. We actually never found out what his real name is, but he said it means "mammoth" in English. He's from the "hilltribe" in northern Thailand, and grew up in a village that borders both Burma and Laos, and so the area is called the "Golden Triangle". It's a small village of 145 people.

Our Asian Brad Pitt:

Brad then put in a DVD (yes, there was even a drop down TV screen in this van!) to give us an introduction to the Foundation's cause. We learned about the sad fate that many elephants have as they are trained to do shows for tourists or to be working elephants (working in the logging industry or as trekking elephants, etc). Many are beaten severely while in training in order to break their spirits and make them submissive to their masters, or mahouts. Then if they refuse to work at some point in their lives, they are beaten very badly and oftentimes blinded or killed by their masters. Some of the stories we heard were incredibly sad.

The Foundation rescues these elephants by purchasing them from their masters and taking them to their park, which is a huge natural area where the elephants can roam free and just be elephants. They receive veterinary care and each elephant here has a mahout too, though these mahouts are kind and use a positive re-enforcement system rather than negative tactics to acclimate the elephants to their new lifestyle.

Once we were close to the park, the main road we had been driving along was closed for paving, so we veered down a dirt path. Apparently it had rained quite a bit recently and the path had turned to mud - so we ended up muddin', Thai style. After a few times trying, we finally got past a curve/mud pit and saw an SUV stuck in the mud ahead of us, so we had to turn around and go back the way we came. We ended up moving the barrier (several tree branches) on the street that was being paved and drove down it anyway. There were several people working on the road, but the pavement was actually dry so it wasn't a problem to drive down it.

Once inside the park, we were given a safety lesson (things like "don't approach an elephant if her mahout isn't nearby"), and then we ventured out to see the baby elephant who was born in the park just two weeks ago. She was so small and cute and she didn't know how to use her trunk yet to suck up water, so she stuck her whole head in the bucket to drink.

Baby elephant:

Then it was lunch time for the elephants, so the mahouts called them to a platform, where we fed them whole bunches of bananas at once:

We then took the elephants down to the river to help bathe them. I rolled up my shorts and got in the river with a bucket and a scrub brush, while Jeremy stood on the shore to photograph the scene:

We then ate a good buffet-style Thai lunch, watched a documentary about the Foundation, then fed the elephants a snack (more bananas), bathed them again, then headed back to our hotel.

More elephant pictures: