Thai trip: Maerim Elephant Sanctuary in Chiang Mai

My dear readers,

Here I am with the third blogpost about the trip to Thailand and Cambodia. After having left Bangkok, we arrived in the beautiful Chiang Mai. We spent 3 nights there, before catching a flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. What we loved the most about this city in the north of Thailand was the atmosphere, the nature that surrounds it and the walled old town. Our hotel was really close to the centre, 10 minutes on foot. On our first evening we went to the evening market and I had the best Indian dinner in my life (New Delhi Indian Restaurant…I followed the Lonely Planet advice!).

During our evening walk we found an agency which was organising visits for tourists and, as we wanted to do something different from the usual, we chose to visit an elephant sanctuary.

Before choosing to go I visited the website of the sanctuary, I read reviews on TripAdvisor and I questioned the lady from the agency. As you might have understood, I really love animals, I don’t eat meat and I try to do my best to avoid anything that exploits or hurts animals. I sign a lot of petitions on Peta and Change and I avoid going to the circus, to the zoo, “Seaworld” and similar places, leather, fur, products that are tested on animals, and so on. To be honest I was sceptical and afraid of sponsoring a tourist-trap that was exploiting elephants, but I haven’t been disappointed by the Full Day Visit (they picked us up at our hotel at 9am and brought us back at 6pm).

Maerim is an elephant sanctuary one hour from the centre of Chiang Mai, it’s surrounded by nature and it doesn’t allow people to ride elephants, because that is bad and stressful for them. They have seven elephants which were saved from circuses and riding camps for tourists, where they were forced to work and tormented with hooks. They are always looking for volunteers who could stay with them for at least 4 weeks so, If you’d like to do an experience like this, now you know 🙂 If I hadn’t different plans for my life at the moment I would definitely consider it.

When we arrived at the camp, at 10.30am, we met the guide and they gave us a blue uniform and a bag full of bananas (I was feeling like I was a member of Lost Dharma Initiative… LOL). They showed us a video that explains why elephants shouldn’t be ridden, what they do at the sanctuary, etc. And then we finally met the beautiful, majestic animals that elephants are. We fed and pet them.

It was a beautiful experience, really.

For lunch there was a cooking lesson: we prepared our own rice noodles.

After lunch we walked next to the elephants (scary yet exciting!) to reach a field where we fed them again and where the guide explained about their projects in the sanctuary and gave us a lot of infos about elephants (did you know that there are three species of elephant? African, Asian and Sri Lankan).

Maerim is planning to save another female elephant from a riding camp.

What we loved the most about this full day visit was the bath with the elephants. There were two puddles, called “The Elephant’s SPA”: one full of mud, where we massaged them, and the other with (not so clean) water, where we rinsed them. It was so moving to see them lying on their side, trusting us enough to let us touch them. I was especially moved when I was bathing a majestic, female elephant and while doing so I accidentally stepped on her huge foot. What was mine in comparison to hers?

The bath is very good for elephants, as they are always full of flies and bacteria, and also quite dry. After bathing them we went back to the reception, the day was over, we swam and chilled by the pool, we changed back into our clothes, bought some souvenirs and took the van back to the hotel.

I was really sad when the visit was over because I didn’t know when in my life I’d get the chance to stay with these beautiful creatures again. My thought at the end of the day? I still wish that elephants could live freely, into the wild, because even if in the sanctuary they do get treated well (they did while we were there of course, I can’t swear on the rest of the time) deep down it still feels wrong that they have to get bathed by tourists everyday.

But I also know that visitors feed them, pet them, massage them and if they choose a sanctuary instead of a riding camp they must like animals. We live in the real world and in the real world horrible people sometimes take elephants from the wild them for horrible purposes: circuses, zoos, riding camps, etc. And once they are not used to living freely anymore sanctuaries are needed. Would we as tourists be happy to pay to go to the sanctuary even if we weren’t allowed to bathe, feed and pet them? That’s maybe the question we need to ask ourselves.

Perhaps elephants need this sanctuary to be safe and protected and I’m sure that 40 year-old Chock-Dee would be happier in Maerim than in the riding place where she is right now. I hope they’ll earn enough to buy and save her. What do you think? Please let me know your opinion in the comments because I love discussing animal rights.

C.