Today we got picked up from our hotel at 6:30am for our half day visit to the Phuket Elephant Jungle Sanctuary.
The majority of the elephants at their facilities are rescues from the trekking and logging industries. There are many companies that offer rides on elephants, which doesn’t sound that bad but apparently when they’re not being ridden they’re treated badly and chained up on very short chains.
The mission of this sanctuary is to provide as many elephants as possible with the good health, freedom, and happiness they truly deserve. They use a progressive and ethically responsible approach to elephant eco-tourism as a platform to raise awareness and educate people from Thailand and around the world about elephant care and the plight of the Asian elephant.
It took about an hour to get to camp 2, one of 3 camps for this sanctuary, in the back of a truck that was semi-open and 2 bench seats down the length. There were only 16 in total on this tour which was a great sized group.
Within a could minutes of arriving, 3 elephants came down to our base camp to greet us. They were not tethered in any way and their mahouts (like a trainer that stays with their elephant, day and night) did not have any sticks or prods. The elephants appeared to listen to voice commands. It was pretty incredible that we were already touching and interacting with the elephants not 5 minutes into our experience.
After a 20 min discussion on some elephant facts and our itinerary for day, we walked up the hill from the camp to feed the elephants. We each fed them a bucket of bananas and watermelon. Apparently elephants don’t have a stomach and only intestines so they need to constantly eat. They eat 200-300lbs of food a day. They definitely liked the watermelon best as a couple times they would reject the bananas by dropping them on the ground. Only when the watermelon was gone would they eat the bananas!
Next it was back to base camp to change into some bathing suits to get ready for the elephant mud spa. Apparently they really like to be scrubbed with mud so we took them to a giant man made mud bath and started scrubbing them with mud. It ended in the mahouts having a little mud fight with us so we all had a bit of the “spa effect”.
After everyone was good and muddy we took the elephants to the pool (giant pit of water) where we rinsed off all the mud we just applied. The baby elephant Mina liked the water a lot and set out to splash a bunch of us.
And what better way to end a spa day than with a home cooked Thai meal. After we all had showers and got cleaned up, we were treated to 5-6 different types of hot Thai food. It was so good!
About an hour later we were on our way back to the hotel, but not before it down-poured.
This was such a great experience! By far the best thing we’ve done so far this trip.
Oh – I LOVE this! WAY better than those terrible elephant rides! Those make me so mad … what a wonderful experience – lucky you!
Looks like a lot of fun.
What a great video of you being sprayed down by the young one. Really, from Vancouver and you make a video of rain??
what a great video of the young elephant spraying you down. that looks like you guys had a lot of fun. From Vancouver and you had to make a video of rain??