Elephant Nature Park (Thailand Part 2)
In case you missed it: Link to Part 1
I am a huge fan of elephants. Our entire Thailand trip was based off of the decision to go volunteer at Elephant Nature Park (ENP). The original dream had actually been to go to India to ride elephants, but as I began to do research for that trip I learned how bad riding elephants is for the elephants. So I adjusted our plans, and stumbled across the ENP rescue park in Thailand, and I am so glad I did!
ENP has several different options for volunteering and visiting from as short to a half day to much longer. Along with being a rescue park for elephants, they also rescue dogs, cats, cows and water buffalo. We chose the week long elephant volunteering option thinking we’d get the most out of the experience, and it was perfect. It was the most rewarding and unique experience. The week long experience basically felt like you were at summer camp, but you know, with elephants. Volunteers came from all over the world, such as the US, Canada, China, Australia, Portugal, UK etc. The 60ish volunteers were split into 4 separate groups. Every day we were assigned a morning chore, followed by lunch, then an afternoon chore, dinner, and free time. The main hangout area referred to as the treehouse was 2 stories with one side against the river, and the other open to the elephant park. The treehouse had a small gift shop, a coffee stand, kitchen, meeting room, dining and lounging areas with views of the park, several bathrooms, and our favorite – the massage area. The food was all vegetarian, and AMAZING. Apparently every group of volunteers keeps telling the staff to make a cookbook to sell, but sadly as far as I know it still doesn’t exist.
The experience starts with the ENP team picking you up from your hotel in Chiang Mai, and making the 1-2 hour drive out to the park. On the van ride is where we met the first two friends of the clique we formed – Fridmar and Clarice. Once we arrived at the park they checked us in, gave us a quick tour of the ‘treehouse’ and told us to report back for orientation in like an hour. They gave us water bottles with little carriers and showed us the giant jug of where to fill them. Thus far Andrew and I had been super paranoid and avoiding non bottled water, but we looked at the jug and realized “whelp, I guess this is what we’re drinking” – and we turned out fine, so guess we were worried for nothing. As long as you know the water is coming from a treatment facility you’re alright, so look for large plastic jugs with tamper proof seals being used to fill any water containers you consider using. After orientation they gave us our rooms (Andrew and I opted for a room with just the two of us). The room was humble, two twin beds squished together under a shared mosquito net, with 3 small tables. The shared bathrooms were outside and around the corner, and the housing complex we were assigned was located right next to one of the elephant stables! Let me tell you – elephants make some weird noises (think ‘someone trying to steal an elephant with a moped but they hit a dog while doing so’.)
The next morning we were given our first chore – “cut banana trees”. This was quite the experience! They drove us out in the back of a truck to the banana farm that had been recently damaged in a storm, dumped a bag of machetes on the ground, and basically said ‘get to work’. And to work we got. It was such a unique chore compared to anything I’ve ever done before, and until then I had never seen a banana tree. As a random side note, while out at the banana farm I had my first run in with using the dreaded squat toilet. It was essentially a drain in the corner of a shed – but when you gotta go, you gotta go.
After we finished loading the bananas, leaves and banana tree trunks onto the truck, we rode (sitting on the bananas) back to the “treehouse” and then switched to vans and rode to the lunch site where the most amazing buffet of food was awaiting us. Lunch was everyone’s favorite, my mouth is watering just remembering the food. The site was a 2 story gazebo structure located on a hill with a fabulous view of the surrounding areas. (In case you’re wondering, the meals did occasionally come with Western favorites such as french fries, but it was mostly as you would expect, Thai food – which is as you know, delicious.)
Now I bet you’re wondering where the elephants come in to play? Well after lunch our assigned chore was “elephant walk”. This wasn’t an actual chore, instead it was a meet and greet with all the elephants! We even saw the elephants hoping to steal a treat chase after the truck we had filled with bananas that morning! As we walked around the park, Mix, our group leader, told us who each of the elephants were, and shared a little history so that we could understand how each of them came to be at ENP. So many elephants have been abused in the tourism and logging industries. It’s really sad to see how humans abuse other creatures, but spending time helping them heal had a very positive feeling.
Following the afternoon chores, we were given a little break until dinner – this is usually when Andrew and I took the time to shower and clean up. We then would hang out at the tree house and either chitchat with friends, read, get some Thai massages or just watch and enjoy the elephants being elephants. One of our friends Emily even led a yoga session every day. Dinner was similar to lunch, although it always came with some kind of crazy dessert. This was Andrew’s favorite part of the meals at ENP. Mango sticky rice is expected, but no one expects corn in your tapioca, or purple mushroom milk balls of bliss – those were good. After eating, we would finish the evening out with some sort of evening activity planned by the park (or if you weren’t interested you were free to do whatever).
Some of the activities included, lessons on thai language and culture, traditional dancing from local performers and music performed by the mahouts (each elephant is assigned a mahout. The mahouts at ENP would follow the elephant around, feed it, clean any wounds that needed tending, and just generally be there for the elephant). In Thailand they have a childhood nursery song called “Chang Chang Chang” that they taught us at one of the culture nights.
Chang Chang Chang
(Elephant, Elephant, Elephant)
Elephant, elephant, elephant, elephant, elephant,
Have you ever seen an elephant or not?
The elephant, it is extremely big
With a long nose called a trunk.
It has fangs beneath the trunk called tusks.
It has ears, it has eyes and a long tail.
Elephant, elephant, elephant, elephant, elephant,
Have you ever seen an elephant or not?
The elephant, it is extremely big
With a long nose called a trunk.
It has fangs beneath the trunk called tusks.
It has ears, it has eyes and a long tail.
Each day continued on similar to the last, but never getting old. I listed the various chores out separately below if you’re interested. It was overall an amazing experience, and I’m so glad we did it. I don’t know if I would go again – but only because there’s so much more in the world I still need to see! If I had unlimited time to travel, I would be back in a heartbeat.
After parting ways from ENP, our friend group had one last hurrah at a local restaurant in Chiang Mai.
To be Continued in Chiang Mai...
Chore Descriptions
This was by far my favorite chore (after elephant walk). It was our first full day at the park, and our first real taste of “we’re not in America anymore”. They piled our group into the back of a fruit truck, and drove us to a banana tree farm about 20 minutes away. The small cropping of trees had recently been destroyed in a storm, making the plants unusable for selling, but perfectly acceptable for hungry elephants. It was our job to cut down any of the banana trees that were damaged and load them onto the truck (trunks and bananas). We got to the crop of trees, the farmer showed us how to cut them – ie swing – and then our guide empties of burlap sack of machetes onto the ground and says ‘alright get to work’. And just like that we all had a machete in hand and started swinging away at all the damaged trees. I’d never seen a banana tree (or a machete) before, so it was definitely an exciting chore to say the least!
This was the only “chore” that wasn’t actually a “chore”. The guides walked us around the park and introduced us to all the people friendly elephants*. It was amazing how they could tell each elephant apart, and knew all of their backstories.
*I say “people friendly” because all the ENP adult elephants are rescued elephants. Some of them were mistreated so much in their previous lives, its unrealistic to expect them to not lash out at people. Those elephants were kept in a separate part of the park where thy could live in peace without the fear of constant human interaction.
This is exactly what you think it is – picking up elephant poo. All the elephants had their own shelter/stable they stayed in at night, so come morning while the elephants were out roaming the park, the volunteers would go through all the stables and shovel up the elephant poo and discarded food, so they could return to a clean pen later that night. This chore was relatively simple – and because an elephants diet is mostly fruit and straw/grass, the poop really wasn’t that disgusting. (Water buffalo poo on the other hand is gross – stay away from those diarrhea pies!!)
Unlike the cush job of “elephant poo” this chore was objectively the worst. Like “elephant poo” this job consisted of picking up elephant poop. The problem however, was that based on the elephant schedules, this chore was only ever done in the afternoon – in the heat of the day, and there was rarely any shade as you went around the park. Each elephant ‘family’ had their own favorite hangout place, so it was relatively easy to find all the poop scattered across the park. We scooped it into the back of a small 4 wheeler trailer where it was then taken to the large “poop pit” (aka the water buffalo swimming hole – for that reason you don’t want to pet them).
Several local farmers either donated or sold their leftover crops to ENP for a cheap price. This chore consisted of unloading the food trucks. The food types varied from bananas, to sugar cane, to pumpkins, to pineapples, and to watermelon. There were also a group of people who helped wrap little tamarind and rice nutrition packs for the elephants. My group was assigned with unloading a watermelon truck- I have never seen so many watermelons in my life. We essentially just formed two assembly lines and tossed the watermelon from person to person until it was in the storage area. Another day we were tasked with unloading bananas – which was inarguably worse. Unlike the mostly clean watermelons, the banana bunches would occasionally be covered in ants. And you wouldn’t realize it until you passed the bunch to the next person. I can’t decide if it was better to be at the front of the line where you were blissfully unaware until it was too late or at the end of the line when you knew the ant covered bundle was coming and had to awkwardly try and grab it anyway and pass it on without slowing anyone down.
After unloading the trucks we were able to grab a few bananas and go out and feed the elephants. Usually they would just eat the banana whole, but every once in a while they would peel it with their trunk, which was really neat to watch. (Pro tip: the browner and riper the banana, the more the elephant will like it!)
The elephant park was located along a small river. The park would occasionally have volunteers construct a dam out of sand bags, so that the water would be deep enough for the elephants to easily splash and play. It was also a nice break for the volunteers from the heat.
While we were constructing the dam we made it about 2/3 of the way across the river, when two of the baby elephants decided it looked like we were having fun and rushed toward us to “help”. Now, where there’s a baby elephant, there’s a protective nana elephant nearby. Because of this we had to get out of the water and essentially just watch as the elephants destroyed our dam one sandbag at a time. The nana elephant even had the audacity to walk on top of it! We weren’t really mad, it was very enjoyable to watch the elephant have fun in the water.
ENP was located in a valley, surrounded by farmers of various sorts. Occasionally the farmers would burn their lands to help reset their soils. The problem with this, is that they weren’t always completely controlled fires. To mitigate the risk of fire, ENP had a fire break along the edge of its land which was essentially a 4ft wide dirt path. For this chore we walked the mountain trail, and raked away any brush or leaves off the trail in hopes of keeping the fire from finding a way across.
This chore consisted of walking around the park to the various tanks, emptying them, scrubbing them and the refilling the tanks with fresh waters. Most of the tanks had a self filling system so it was very easy. There was however one tank in the center of the park that I’m pretty sure hadn’t been cleaned in months. The spigot to empty the tank was buried so at first we assumed it didn’t have one, so we were bucketing all the water out by hand. It was basically a swamp in that tank, but we cleaned it anyway! Hopefully the elephants appreciated all our hard work!
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