Ok, when you think of Japan you imagine neon lights or geishas… and when you think of Thailand what comes to mind? Do you think of Costco hot dogs for 1.50 or perhaps the memories of visiting your local dentist office (go get that 6 month check up if you are reading this and have been neglecting it).. yeah I’m guessing those were the last things you imagined… probably more along the lines of waterfalls, temples, and ELEPHANTS 🐘.
Today was finally the day we were heading to one of the famous Chiang Mai Elephant Sanctuaries. In the year following up to the honeymoon, we had done a lot of research on which sanctuary to visit, which was ethical, and what to expect when we visited. Would we stare at them with binoculars from afar or get trampled by them? Our research led us to pick Patara Elephant Sanctuary in Chiang Mai.
People have asked me why didn’t you do the islands of Thailand with all the beautiful beaches they have elephants down there as well? Well, those Islands are extremely crowded and can be a nightmare to traverse, thanks to Instagram influencers trying to get that perfect shot.
(Koh Phi Phi – Expectations from Instagram)
(Koh Phi Phi – Reality)
Remember, people only want to show the glitz and glamour on Instagram. That’s a reason we wanted to do this site, to show all angles of our trip. Not everything is picture perfect, and a great example was Bangkok. 😂
OK back to the elephants. How did you decide on which elephant sanctuary? There are dozens, and what makes it different than the rest?
A few of the reasons we chose Patara over all the other locations: not as well known as the others. I had to dig and find this one in the trenches of Google and Reddit.
Another reason, it was listed as an ethical location and provided a long resume of conservation activities to help, but for all we knew it could be like a new grad who just built his linkedin profile and padded it: “seasoned public relations figure interacting with a multi-billion dollar portfolio, and operating a fluid mechanics system”. Bro, you were a cashier at McDonalds who once tried to use the broken ice cream machine. We wouldn’t truly know how the elephants were treated until we visited.
However, the main reason we chose this location was two reasons: smaller group sizes (only two groups a day capped at 35 per group)…
Lastly and the biggest reason… this location had smaller groups only two sessions a day and you could RIDE THE ELEPHANTS BAREBACK.
Before all you PETA enthusiasts and elephant experts lay into us, please calm down keep reading and go visit Pan
tara for yourself before giving any of your opinions to us. It’s funny in the past few years, people went from self taught experts in epidemiology to experts in foreign affairs and are probably seasoned zoologists if they are reading this thinking “How dare they ride an elephant”. This article will lay out the process and our adventures. Trust me,if you want to be upset, go advocate against the Tiger exhibits in Thailand (those seemed extremely questionable).
We got picked up from our hotel around 7:30 and met our guide Kao. He spoke very good English, and when we got into the van we noticed it was only us. Kao, beaming from ear to ear, excitedly told us that he had convinced his boss to let us have a private tour because the other 25 people in the group did not speak English. He also said because it was our honeymoon he wanted us to have a relaxed and intimate experience. We felt incredibly honored, and he zipped up the mountain.
Kao conversed with us, and we learned a lot about him. Kao lived 4 hours north in a small village called the Karen Hilltribe. He told us he was not associated with the long neck and said no I am a real villager. Sounds like our hunch about the long neck being mainly a tourist grab was right.
Kao lived at the sanctuary and would go back to visit his family every month (it was a 3 hour drive into the most remote parts of the Thailand jungle). I asked “How is your English so good if you live in a village?” He said working at Patara, I love being around the Americans because they teach me English. He also made a friend who works at Patara that spoke English and they would teach each other their native tongues. Now onto the elephant experience.
I’m going to have Jessa write her perspective without reading mine, so y’all can get a glimpse of it from both of us.
Andrei’s Experience:
We arrived at 8:30 AM and hopped out of the van and we turned around and saw 4 elephants sprinting down the mountain towards us. Two large elephants and two baby elephants. It was quite a cute sight seeing them sprint with excitement and trunks and ears flapping. I thought the little one was going to start flying like Dumbo. This was already a great sign! The elephants were happy and giddy to come to us. They were barreling down this grassy path out of the jungle with the youngest elephants far in the lead.
We spent the next 20 minutes with just us and the elephant family all to ourselves. We fed them sugarcane and bamboo.
The younger elephant was 5 months old (female) and the bigger baby elephant (male) was 7 months old. The girl elephant loved how calm and nurturing Jessa was, and the boy elephant loved my energy.
The older baby elephant kept tugging at my hair. Either it thought my hair was food, or it was telling me I was due for a haircut. I learned that elephants love to wrestle and rough house. Wow these baby elephants are stronger than I realized.
After 25 mins a few more vans arrived ans the other guests had arrived for the morning session. We learned about the elephant hospital and sanctuary and how they operated differently. The primary motto for Patara is “Extinction is forever” and their focus is rehabilitation and conservation. Patara currently houses 87 elephants, and employs local villagers from the Karen tribe in the surrounding areas. The trainers live on the premise and spend more time with the elephants than their own families.
The elephants are a combination of rescued and bred elephants (55) from various circuses and other unethical elephant Sanctuaries. A lot of other Sanctuaries will send the sad or unhealthy elephants to Patara because they are known for being one of the best facilties for caring and treating for elephants. They had a hospital for elephants right in front of us!
Patara has four ‘points’: rescue, recovery, reproduction and reintroduction. Patara focuses on actual mating instead of the use of artificial insemination for breeding. 40 percent of the elephants had been bred at the camp. This already seemed like a great place!
The trainers split us into 3 groups: a family from China containing about 8 people, a group of English speaking tourists with 15 people, and then Jessa and I. We headed off with Kao into the jungle after putting on an elephant shirt. The shirt helped the elephant know we were with Kao and safe.
We walked about 10 mins to a grassy area and waited for our elephants to arrive. The first elephant to arrive was a girl named Mikwan. Jessa went over and introduced herself.
This elephant was 4 times as big as the first elephant family we had encountered an hour ago. Each elephant had a trainer who knew the elephant very well, so Jessa talked with the trainer and learned some basic commands to communicate with her elephant. Bon Bon was used to tell the elephant to eat, but wasn’t necessary since they seemed to know to eat. Dee-Dee was the phrase used to compliment the elephant, similar to good boy/girl. Don’t worry, we will post more photos of Jessa and her elephant once we get to Jessa’s perspective.
Next came my elephant, Bergen. This elephant was HUGE. The trees and ground shook as it walked towards us. Ok, that was a tiny exaggeration, but wow was it big. You can tell it was a male elephant by its long ivory tusks and by other ways I won’t describe. My trainer did not speak any English, so I just followed his visual commands. I was worried most about this elephant squishing my feet or deciding it wanted to be a lap elephant and plopping into my lap. I mean … imagine being around an animal that weighs more than double your car! My elephant started flapping it’s ears so that was a great sign.
We spent the next 20 mins feeding our elephants and getting to know them so they would feel comfortable around us. This elephant was a little intimidating. One wrong step and my foot would be crushed, or imagine being impaled by this massive tusk.
Next, we led the elephants (gently grab their flappy ear) to a garden hose for a little drink. Bergen weighed around 5 tons and Mikwan weighed about 4 tons. That’s a ton of elephant.
After feeding and giving the elephants some water, it was time to teach the elephants to sit. You would smack it on the side with your palm and say Nalom. Calm down, my little activists, a little smack on the side is not going to hurt a 5 ton elephant 🙄. The elephant sat down and Jessa gracefully scooted onto the back of her elephant.
My elephant did not sit down, because even if he did sit down he was too large to crawl on. Instead, my trainer pointed at the trunk and said “foot here”. Excuse me 😳, what do you mean foot here. The elephant definitely was rolling his eyes as he seemed impatient with my confusion, so not wanting to upset the elephant I slowly put a foot on his trunk.
Expecting a calm and graceful ascension onto the elephant, I was shocked when my elephant quickly raised me up and tossed me onto his head. This was not a 3 foot raise. He raised almost 12 feet into the air (seriously america switch to metric, it’s way better).
I expected to see a cinch rope or something to hold onto, but nope just a big fat elephant head. I scrambled onto the head and then slowly turned around on the neck. I was already sweating and wondering ok where is the rope to hold onto. The cinch rope was behind me, and the trainer said “just put hands on head”. OK, I just went from tripping over every sidewalk in Tokyo to having to become an expert in balancing on the neck of an elephant; my life depended on it.
Jessa was behind me grinning and excited(see above), and here I was trying to figure out how to not die. We started moving forward. Ah yes, a calm peaceful ride around the little grassy field we had fed the elephants was going to be such a blast. Yay I can do this 🤩 I still remember the last time I rode an elephant back at the circus in 1998 or 1999? I remember it was one of my first experiences in America and I had this light blue sweater or shirt on. My parents had gotten us this flashy spinning light thing as well. The memories came flooding back…. until I was interrupted.
We were not going in a little circle, we were heading towards the trees. We were passing the trees, and we were now in the jungle 🧐. All I could see now was trees and the jungle and I just assumed Jessa was behind me by calling out “YOU DOING OK BACK THERE. I can’t see you”. She seemed to be doing excellent, her elephant was calm and relaxing taking its time.
My elephant had ADHD and was hungry 😒 Every few meters (I wish America would use the metric system) my elephant would lean over the edge and grab some bamboo or pull down a tree and grab leaves with its trunk. That’s fine and dandy, but an elephant pulling down a tree requires a lot of yanking.. and that involves me being bucked. This was extremely sketchy, and I had nothing to even hold me in place.
Then my elephant decided it wanted to scratch it’s butt and side on the tree. Not just one tree, not just two trees, but every tree it saw 🙄 I kept having to raise up my legs to avoid getting squished between the elephant and tree. It was just me and Jessa, so all you could hear was the sound of my elephant scratching and the tree VIOLENTLY shaking. What if a large coconut fell on me and I got knocked out 🤔 who would take care of Jessa and remember to winterize the sprinklers?
Ok, we are almost there it’s been about 30 mins only halfway to go. Going uphill had been relatively smooth and easy. Except I didn’t see any path ahead… that’s because the path was down. We had climbed over the mountain and now it was time to go down to the river to bathe the elephant. My trainer was quite a few feet behind me chatting with Jessa’s trainer, and yelled up to me: Grab the rope behind you. I grab the rope and lean back and then the elephant takes off. It doesn’t slowly walk down the path it is increasing his pace and every bounce felt like I was going to launch forward like a clown on a bull.
My left hand gripped that rope so tight with what little space I could find between the elephant and rope. By the time we got to the river I could not feel my fingers and the skin had rubbed off and my hands were bleeding 😬 guess my days of dreaming of being a hand model were over.
We enjoyed a very nice picnic lunch they prepared for us, which included pork and local fruits such as mangosteen, longan, and rambutan. We sat and watched our elephants camouflage into the jungle to take a nap. After a 45 min romantic private lunch, our trainer and guide woke up the elephants and they came to the river in front of us.
We were handed a bucket and brush and instructed to clean the elephants and they would be back tomorrow to check on us. Just kidding, but they did tell me you need to clean his head… ummm how? He’s too tall. That meant I had to crawl back on this elephant and hope it did not decide to shake me off. The cleaning was fun but a little nerve wracking because what if I accidentally tickled him?
To conclude our adventure, we rode a shared elephant about 10 mins out of the jungle to a clearing where the vehicle was parked to take us back to where we started. It was such an incredible and unbelievable experience.
I could tell the elephants were very happy (ears flapping means happy) and well taken care of. This was truly a sanctuary for elephants and provided a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to experience.
Jessa’s Experience:
I’m sure Andrei already talked through the agenda for the day, so I won’t bore you with any more details. However, I will tell you how I felt about meeting the elephants!
As we drove up, I saw the 4 elephants coming down from the grassy hill area along the trail. One of my favorite parts of the day was watching the baby elephants trot down the hill, they were adorable! It was very special having our own time with the elephants. They were tuft skinned, full of wired hair (reminded me of the pigs), huge mouths, and the end of their trunks felt slimy.
While Andrei was getting on the ground waiting for the elephants to come cuddle, I just watched with amazement that we were with the elephants. When the other guests arrived, they were a bit shocked to see Andrei playing with one of the baby elephants. One lady, under her breath, goes, “They do have teeth you know!”. I just smiled. She clearly did not tolerate Andrei’s behavior and clearly was a bit jealous that was not herself rough housing with the elephants.
It was a special time meeting my elephant, Mikwan. At first, it felt odd following her around, touching her, and giving her a lot of words of affirmation. It was much needed on both ends if I was going to get bare back on her.
Mikwan was cute because it felt like she was in her own world. She did not listen well to her owner, the first time, but would eventually listen.
When they told us that we would be riding the elephant, I was a little nervous. The elephant bent down and laid for me to get on her, I gently tried to climb up (worried about her ankle I was stepping on) but remembered that I probably don’t weigh much to her at all.
As I got up, the owner kept telling me to scoot up. I felt like there was no more room to scoot up or I would be tumbling down her trunk. I inched forward and put my knees right above her ears.
There was a lot of room up there and it actually felt stable. I put my palms down on her forehead and was ready to go! Of course there were moments I would grip the rope tighter than others, but overall felt easier than galloping on a horse. We started hiking to our lunch spot. It was a very steep hike! I was glad to be on the elephant than on feet.
Every time our elephant would step up, we would need to lean forward. When we went down hill, the owners told us to lean back and hold the rope if needed. Thankfully, I had a tug on my rope.
Ahead of me, Andrei was flopping everywhere. It did not seem like he had much control over his body! I was wondering if he was being dramatic or if it really was a different riding experience for him. When we came across, what would be a big lunge to us, a rock, I would embrace the impact. To the elephants, it was really nothing to them.
During lunch, Andrei found a big butterfly net. He was having fun waving it around pretending to find butterflies. Soon after, one of the elephants went into the large pond and dumped 4 loads of huge poop! Feeling a little grossed out that we were about to get into that water, I saw a lady grab the butterfly net to retrieve the 4 doo-doo pieces floating in the water. We felt a little bit more relieved!
After bathing the elephants, we both shared my elephant and made quick walk back to the nearest clearing to head to a road back to the camp. It was really fun going on the elephants together one last time.
As you can see, we both had completely different encounters with our elephants. Our advice if you have an elephant excursion upcoming: be ready for anything! You will have an incredible time 🤩
The next day, we woke up early and took a taxi to the Xcentre. It was our last day in Thailand, so I wanted to end it with a crazy experience… Bungee jumping 😏. We showed up around 9:20 and nobody was there besides a few workers. I told them one bungee jump (I wasn’t going to make Jessa do this) and they took my order like I was at Chic-Fil-A and had just ordered a frosted lemonade.
I was told to follow that guy, then I sat down and they put some straps secured by velcro around my ankles. Expecting a lengthy safety video or pump up speech, instead they ushered me into a capsule that carried me 164 feet into the air (that’s 50m for you metric folks). I hop over to the edge, they clip me in and say on the count of 3 lean over and fall, but don’t look down before you go off. Of course the first thing I do is look down 😬
How safe was this? I had just paid 50$ less than 5 mins ago and was already about to jump off 🤨. I started to ask questions, arms out, feet or head first. The guy starts to just count down 3. 2. 1. Go … with no choice left I lean forward and free fall 😬 I could go into physics and teach you the calculation behind my fall, but I will spare you with a brief summary: I fell in approximately 3 seconds.
Then bounced almost as high as I had fallen and then bounced again and again. The most painful part of bungee jumping is all the blood rushing to your head, and having the straps pull at your ankles.
Other than that minor discomfort it was a fun time. However, bungee jumping felt more like a once and done kind of activity. I’ve done it, and don’t feel the need to do again.
To celebrate bungee jumping, Jessa and I did go-karts. We were the only ones on the track, and it kind of felt like that scene in Rocky where he has the entire ice rink to himself and his girl.
In conclusion, Chiang Mai truly redeemed Thailand from our experience in Bangkok. The weather was cooler, the food was tastier, and the nature was abundant! You can walk everywhere safely, and tuktuks are very common in Chiang Mai. Just be prepared to book excursions that will last an entire day. Most activities are not 10 mins away, they usually require at least an hour of travel time each way.
We highly reccomend anyone wanting to visit Thailand to check out Chiang Mai and the Patara Elephant Sanctuary. Now onto Singapore to go eat some amazing steak to trigger all the PETA enthusiasts.
