Chiang Rai - Thailand

Suddenly it was there. Gray and wet. After nearly 1.5 months, bad weather finally arrived. One evening, we even had to dig out our long pants again. An unusual but also somewhat good feeling. :)

Our first encounter with elephants was in a national park in southern Thailand. We wanted to get a closer look at these magnificent creatures. Ideally, we wanted to do it in a place where they are not exploited for tourists.

In this era of 'Eco Tourism', most tours advertise that you don't ride the elephants and only wash them and play with them. They all call themselves sanctuaries. However, we found out that many of these sanctuaries only rent the elephants and then use them for logging or carrying tourists again. Additionally, the treatment of the animals once the tourists are gone is questionable. That's why we decided to visit Elephant Valley in Chiang Rai http://www.elephantvalleys.com.

The elephants, along with their mahouts (elephant trainers), are rescued from logging or tourism activities. At first, they have to get used to the fact that they can freely roam in this huge park. This is not easy when you have spent your whole life in captivity. Ironically, at the beginning, the elephants still need to be chained overnight because they would be too restless otherwise and would not feel safe. But step by step, they try to change this. The main goal is to eventually relocate them to an even larger park where they can live independently without human influence. But this takes a lot of time and training. For us, it was a great experience to observe the elephants up close in a somewhat natural environment.

From Chiang Rai, we took a bus to cross the border into Laos.

Text by Oli

Image processing by Rahel