Elephant Nature Park close to Chiang Mai
– When we decided to spend our holidays in Thailand I immediately started to do some research on where to find happy elephants in their natural surroundings. Actually it is not that easy if you want to avoid booking an Elephant riding tour. This is not what I want. Despite feeling stupid I read a lot of bad things about this whole industry…
In the end I found a place online which looked quite promising to me: Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai. A rescue center for old and abandonned elephants. I’ve booked our Single Day Visit tickets online in advance as visitor numbers are limited and it was high season at that time.
I liked the park a lot. We both did – although it was a lot more fun for me than for my boyfriend. In the park, the elephants were able to come and go as they wanted. They could decide what they wanted to do and they were not forced in any way to entertain the tourists.
The Single Day Visit ticket includes the pick-up from the hotel in Chiang Mai in the morning, quite good Thai food for lunch, plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables to feed the elephants and later on a drop-off at the hotel in the evening. The 90 minutes way to the park by minibus was challenging as the bus was bouncing the whole time, especially on the not so even jungle roads, we felt a little bit sick after a while. But this was the only little downside of this day.
We had plenty of time to get to know the elephants and their individual sad stories. Each elephant has a different history – a former circus elephant rescued from Cambodia with his eyes blind from years working in the spots, a tourist elephant who had to collect donations on the streets of a big city, a former free-living elephant who got hurt from one of the landmines which can still be found in the jungle, etc. At least these are happy ending stories because the elephants recovered from their pain with the help of the lovely caring staff over there and they are now enjoying the casual living together…
Feeding the elephants, bathing them in the river or simply watching them interacting with each other. I am always recommanding this place to people who are planning a trip to Chiang Mai.
The jungle itself was less adventurous than I expected it to be but I guess it becomes wilder when you go further up North to Chiang Rai and the boarder to Laos.