December 31st, 2015 – What a way to spend the last day of the year!
Generally, I disapprove the use of animals as entertainment. There is a fine line between using animals for educational purposes and entertainment. I try my best to avoid places that use animals as entertainment. At the “Elephant Experience”, we learned about the elephants, we watched them play in the pond and then we washed them down. Afterwards we chopped up food and fed them. Although there we posed with the elephants, there was no trained show and there were no elephant rides through the jungle.
The elephants at this camp are elephants that were used in work camps and then abandoned. Traditionally, elephants have been used in Thailand for the logging industry and to help clear land. Asian elephants are smaller and have a better temperament than the African Elephant. The elephants have been a part of the Southeast Asian cultures for hundreds of years with a lot of mythological references. The knowledge of training an elephant has been handed down in families over generations. The elephant trainer, known as a mahout starts as a boy who is assigned a young elephant. The remain together through their lives.
At the elephant experience, they marched a couple of elephants out for us to see and watch as we were told about the elephants. Several more came out and they were allowed to play in the muddy pond. They seemed to really enjoy that. After they came out, we washed and scrubbed them. Afterwards, it was feeding time. Additional elephants were brought out during feeding time.
To feed them, we chopped up pineapple, sugar cane, bananas and ears of corn. They were all eager to eat. What was interesting was how the elephants differed in their tastes, the old female with no teeth would only take banana and pineapple. The male elephant would take just about everything but would throw down the sugar cane. None of them seemed to like the grass and wouldn’t go near the tamarind balls that we were asked to disguise with banana leaves. If they took something they didn’t like, they would throw it on the ground but if they liked it, it went straight into their mouths.
It was a great experience!
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