Elephants are intelligent, loving, grand animals, and to spend a day in their company was a time I will never forget. In northern Thailand, outside the city of Chiang Mai, the Thai Elephant Care Center allows only a small number of tourists every week to interact with their older and retired elephants.
Asian elephants eat about 165-330 pounds of food a day! So feeding them is a huge undertaking. We spent a lot of the day prepping their “rice balls,” grasses, shrubs, and many more meals. They were big fans of bananas! The employees had amusing names for the elephants, such as “Dancing Lady,” because she would always sway side to side like she was dancing to a song in her youth. There was a male elephant who didn’t have his tusks anymore, so they called him “Lady Boy.” Jokes aside, this sanctuary was an amazing place, where every animal was so deeply cared for. Each elephant would have their own employee who would spend all day with them, looking after their needs. One of which is being social because, just like us, elephants are social creatures. Visiting elephants like this is not cheap. They are big business in Thailand, so unfortunately elephants are taken advantage of in tourism. It was extremely important to me and my wife Lauren that we give our money to people who are actually helping the elephants.
The choices we make with tourism can do harm that we don’t realise, but it also can do a world of good with that little bit of research and education.
(Originally Published May 2022)
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Chiang Mai, Thailand - 2018
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