The Elephant Conservation Park

This post was written especially for our neice and nephews, Ian, Kendra, Gavin and Lucas, but you might enjoy it too...

A few days ago, we were able to make a quick detour on our trip South through Thailand to the Elephant Conservation Park near Chiang Mai. It really wasn't much of a detour, as the park is off the main highway heading south, but it's often overlooked by tourists because tour offices offer "elephant shows" that are much easier to get to. A taxi was out of our budget, so we found a public bus and asked them to let us off at km37. We weren't sure if we'd actually make it, but after an hour or two we were dropped off next to some huge statues of elephants. We were able to spend a full morning with the elephants (the real ones, not the statues) before heading out to the road again to flag down the "ordinary" bus (I think ordinary means old with no AC) to continue on our way!

See photos of the elephants...


Chiang Mai and northern Thailand seem to have plenty of opportunity for tourists to see and ride elephants. However, we've read that many of these beautiful animals get mistreated and overworked by their owners in an effort to make more money. The Elephant Conservation Park still trains elephants for working traditional Thai jobs like moving logs and you can ride the elephants and such (some "rescue" places won't allow anything that isn't a natural part of an elephant's habitat including carrying humans), but at least they teach the mahouts or elephant trainers how to properly care for and respect the creatures they work with. They also take in elephants who have been mistreated and the park holds the world's only elephant hospital!

We arrived early enough to catch the morning bathing session. We were the only tourists in the park besides one Thai family. There were about 20 elephants around for the bath and the following show, but we saw plenty more around the park.

The mahouts, who apparently only wear blue, scrubbed down the elephants.

The elephants here are Asian elephants (as opposed to their cousin, the African elephant). Asian elephants have 5 toes on the front foot and 4 on the back. African only have 3 on the back feet. They also have smaller ears and fewer ribs. Usually, only the males have tusks.

The elephant is a beautiful and inspiring creature. They also have a very similar life cycle to humans, making them even more interesting. They tend to live to be between 60 and 80 and have babies in their mid-twenties. The herd will gather around a mother when she is giving birth to "help." A calf weighs about 220 lbs when it is born, and the gestation period for a baby, though, is 22 months!

Even this place had a show for visitors. After bathtime, the elephants lined up with these first ones holding a drum. The elephant in the center played the drum with a surprisingly steady rythmn.

Some elephants walked trunk to tail.

The "performance" basically showed off what the elephants could do. Some of the things were obviously for tourists, such as...

...raising a flag......putting a hat on a boy's head......painting (another elephant did a very pretty painting of flowers, but this one was new at it and just did whatever it wanted!)...

... but they also showed how elephants are traditionally used in Thai culture, in particular to push, pull, or carry heavy timbers through the jungle. The Thai king also has a certain number of Royal Elephants for special occasions. The Park has four of these.

After the show, we could feed the elephants bananas or sugar cane. They ate the entire thing, banana peel and sugar cane stalk and all! Their trunks were hard and leathery, with an upper lip that acted just like a finger to strongly grab what they wanted. Elephants are so big they have to eat and eat to maintain their body weight. Another interesting fact... they urinate about 1-1/2 gallons at a time!

While we're at it, kids, why not show you some of the other animals we've seen so far. The photos are small, but I think you can click on it to see it larger.

Cambodia-This monkey climbed up into the biggest temple at Angkor Wat and just wandered around for a while.

Cambodia- a friendly lizard

Vietnam- there are a lot more butterflies around here.

Laos- The animal we've seen the most, the water buffalo!

On a moto with Mr. Minh- these Vietnamese children were giving their cow a new greener hair style... the little girl was shy.

Laos- some rescued Asian black bears. They have big white moons on their chests.

Laos- this bug was bigger than my thumb. No idea what it is, but it was scary-looking!







Thailand- another butterfly at Ayuthaya.











Sapa, Vietnam- yup, that's a fat boar.

Sukhothai, Thailand- a herd of cows was just wandering around this old temple ruin

Ayuthaya, Thailand- this very big lizard actually hissed at Josh.

Ayuthaya, Thailand- Here's a bird photo for you, Ian. See if you can spot it!