My Time in Tokyo

Adventures with Elephants!

Our first activity in Thailand was to visit an elephant rescue park. Ran Tong Elephant Park was opened just a year ago, and is privately owned by a man in Chiang Mai. The park is managed by a Swedish guy, who has been living in Thailand for about 6 years. He seemed very passionate about the elephants and the mission of the park, and was generous with explaining the details about caring for the elephants and how the park is operated.

Ran Tong strives to rescue elephants from miserable situations. Sometimes they find elephants that are owned by private owners, who realize they cannot afford to feed and care for the animal. And sometimes they rescue elephants from places that are using the elephant for tourism and mistreating the elephants. Each time they rescue an elephant the park has to buy it for around $400,000. That price combined with the cost of upkeep, (and I believe he said bi-weekly doctor checkups) means the cost to maintain the park is very high. The manager was adamant that elephants are elephants and at Ran Tong they want the elephants to just be elephants rather than do circus acts like at other places. Many touristy places make the elephants do tricks, paint pictures, or other things unnatural for an elephant to do.

Upon arriving at the main compound, we were given a set of rough clothes to change into and then taught how to communicate with the elephants. We were taught commands in Thai, so if we wanted to we could talk to our elephants during the ride. But it was not necessary, the mahouts were with us the whole way.

A mahout is a person who is paired with an elephant and stays with them full time as their handler. The mahouts, who are often not literate, live on the park grounds and spend every day taking care of their elephants. Their job is seven days a week and 24 hours a day. Every night the mahouts tie up their elephant on a line in the forest before going to bed. (Otherwise the elephants will walk out of the park and go graze in the neighboring rice fields and get everyone in trouble!) The mahouts generally grow up around elephants, and once paired with one they generally stay with that elephant for many years. If the elephants switch mahouts too often, they will become confused and lose their bond with the mahout.

My elephant was called Masha, and her mahout is named Am, who is 22 years old. Am spoke a tiny bit of English, and was very friendly and fun. He was chatting and laughing with me and taking pictures for us the whole day. Am told me that he had been Mechau's mahout for six years! After meeting the elephants and learning the commands we got to take a little ride on a trail through the forest. My elephant and I quickly bonded (at least I think so!) and she even began responding to my commands which was very exciting. I read the biography of 35 year old Masha on the park website and it says that she used to work in the logging trade. But after logging with elephants was banned in Thailand in 1989, she and her mahout escaped to Burma to continue working. After our initial ride in the forest, we headed back to the main camp for lunch.

We were served a delicious homemade curry lunch and were given fresh pineapple that we were also told we could save for the elephants. So we ate some and then after lunch we got to feed pineapple to elephants. I intended to save my pineapple for Masha, but an old mahout saw me walking around with pineapple and motioned me over. He showed me how I could stick my hand right into the elephant's mouth and feed her without getting hurt. So I went ahead and did that, sticking my whole hand inside her big, slimy mouth to give her a treat. It was a really neat experience!

After eating and resting, we headed back out and got on our elephants again. This time we took a longer,
rockier, and in some places much steeper ride through the forest and down to the river. This time it was much harder to hold on, especially when your elephant decides to shake its head! To ride you basically sit on the elephants neck, so it already feels precarious, as though any minute you might topple over the head of the elephant. But surprisingly, the elephants are quite graceful and are able to walk across even tiny bridges and super narrow paths with no problem. I remember thinking there was no the elephant could possibly walk along the narrow paths with the steep drop offs to the side. But I was proved wrong! Our elephants walked right into the
river, and then laid down for us to dismount. Then we got to splash around and play and scrub the elephants in the river. When our time to play in the river was up we rode back up to the main camp. With that, our elephant adventure was over and we headed back to Chiang Mai.

Since it was Christmas Eve, Tricia, Charles, and I decided to find a restaurant to have a nice dinner and stumbled upon a place called Charcoa which was serving a five-course special Christmas dinner. It turned out to be delicious! Also, we paid less then twenty dollars apiece for the meal, yet it was a dinner that would have easily cost over a hundred dollars elsewhere. Each course offered three choices, so we each ordered one and then split everything three ways while we were eating. That way we got to try everything! We continued eating in this fashion for most of our trip actually, so we were able to sample a variety of foods.