Thailand has probably the most elephants of any country in the world, perhaps with the exception of its neighbor, Myanmar. The sad part is that most of them used to be in the circus, begging on the streets (it's a real thing, they were called "begging elephants") or abused while forced to work in the forest. We found a park that takes in these abused and mistreated elephants and tries to give them a good home with plenty of food and space to roam. Spending a day playing with elephants at Baan Chang Elephant Park was one of the coolest experiences of my life!
Baan Chang lets you "take care of" an elephant for a day for a small fee, which is basically a donation to the park. During your day, you get to feed, ride, and bathe your elephant! (you could order one elephant per person or split one between two people. obviously we each had to have our own elephant). While I forget the name of mine, she was sooo cute!
This is me feeding her.
This one was much gentler.
After a long feeding (they must have eaten 100lbs of sugar cane a piece), we were ready to learn how to get on the elephant. The mahouts speak a specific language to the elephants to get them to do things. NON LONG means - get down on one knee and let me climb up your leg! After a few shouts, Jordan scaled the elephant.
I boarded mine as well. Such cute big floppy ears!
The elephants were so cute we just couldn't stop petting them.
After a long training session, we were permitted to ride the elephants. We learned the the commands for GO (pay), and TURN (we don't remember anymore), they let us drive elephants. Here is Jordan doing so.
My mahout was either trying to embarrass me or was just trying to make me smile (see: hat on my head - it's made out of a leaf!). Either way was fine with me.
My elephant was a wanderer and was HUNGRY. She continuously wandered off the path to get non-approved foliage dinners. What can I say, she was starving.
Here is us being happy after riding elephants.
Perhaps one of the most fun parts of this day was playing with the elephants in the mud pit. We stood on them, scrubbed them, rolled around with them, aaaand....
were sprayed by them!! I felt childish the whole time. And it felt so right.
This was a great experience and I highly recommend it to animal lovers everywhere. It was a little expensive, but completely worth it. And a good cause, to boot.
Oh, and this was in the "city" of Chiang Mai, which is the second largest city in Thailand. They have a lot of temples. This is the cool one.
Also, they had a SURPRISING amount of gay night life. We went to a bar/massage parlor and made a bunch of friends. Cheers to Thai friends!
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