We are the elephant whisperers

The one thing on our list to do in Chiang Mai was visit an elephant sanctuary. We wanted to go to a place where there was no riding and where the animals were treated well. There are quite a few sanctuaries for rescued elephants and we chose the Maerim Elephant Sanctuary that our hostel Mad Monkey reccomended. If you’re ever in Chiang Mai and looking to hang with some elephants here’s the link Maerim Elephant Sanctuary

It was an all day event which kicked off with an atrociously early 9am pick up, stopping off at a 7-11 en route for essential cheese toasties and being dropped off in the evening like tired school children. We were lucky that our tour group was made up of the folk we had been travelling with, as it made for an entertaining day.

The itinary

The day was broken down into:

Meeting the elephants.

Feeding the elephants.

Visiting where the banana trees are grown and helping to chop them down (much easier than it sounds).

Making our lunch.

Walking with the elephants.

Mud bath with the eles.

Swimming with the elephants.

We met our hilarious guide for the day who gave us an introductory talk and the run down on some H&S do’s and don’ts.

The main points being don’t bend over if you drop their food (easy target), don’t stand behind them (obviously, they don’t come rear view mirrors or parking sensors yaknow), don’t walk away from them with their food in your hands or bag (their sence of smell is incredible and they’ll follow you until they’ve had every last gram of those sweet sugar canes or narnas you have). And finally and most importantly, because they have all been rescued from the illegal logging or circus industries and have had awful lives you must talk to them, pat them, give them hugs and basically be bffs with them for the day. I reckon we could do that, so deal.

Sexy blue clothes were provided for us, so we slipped them on and we were ready to meet our big beautiful friends. All the grown up elephants at the sanctuary were female and there was one baby boy, who was a naughty. little. shit. Cute as a wee button though like a real like version of Barber the elephant cartoon tv program.

After meeting them behind a fence we were allowed into their area to interact with them more closely.

After we hung out with them for a couple of hours we were taken to where the banana trees were grown and to help with cutting them down. This is way easier than it sounds especially with a machete. After we’d all shown off our excellent neandethal-machette-waving-chopping skills we were carted back to the ele camp via white knuckle ride on top of the van.

After lunch, was walking with the animals and a bit of schooling on elephant characteristics, elephant poo and elephant behaviour.

After we had sniffed a sufficient amount of elephant poo and could rattle of some facts (fyi 5 toenails on the front foot, 4 on the back) we took them for a mud bath. Though I reckon the ratio of mud to shit was like 70/30. Knee deep too. But those nellies need to be scrubbed with that mud and scrub is what we did. And then we had the obligatory mud slinging fight.