We spent the afternoon at an ethical elephant sanctuary today – the Elephant Retirement Park about 40 mins drive from Patong Beach – and it was amazing. Most of our time was spent with Euro, the big male elephant, but we also hung out with an old grandma and some rescued babies. This baby was called Pinky and he was my favourite, even if he was a fruit thief ❤️❤️❤️
I did a lot of research on ethical animal sanctuaries before we came over and I am aware these guys (alongside all the other Thai elephant sanctuaries) walk a fine line with the photography opportunities….however it’s also how they get a lot of their funding which allows them to buy more elephants out of working conditions. Not ideal but certainly better than animals being left in the circus or on ride farms.
They have a no harmful contact and no chains policy here and the animals do seem genuinely happy, our elephant buddy knew when it was mud bath time and happily clomped in and rolled around like an idiot lol. They also explained the ones that display distress towards people due to their backgrounds don’t have to meet anyone – they stay up on the mountain doing their own thing.
During our half day we paid a bit extra to be in a small group for a VIP tour (Mel + larger groups = bitchy Mel) and it turned out we were totally on our own. Woohoo! We learnt how to cook our own lunch of pad Thai and tam som, ate it, took Euro for a jungle walk where he had a great time playing in the waterfall, gave him a mud bath, gave him a wash and then fed him and the grandmas rice balls since their teeth are bad.
They actually grabbed my phone off me (the guides, not the elephants) and took hundreds of photos. Literally hundreds. There will also be some put up on their Facebook page later on which they took with their better quality camera.
Something to be aware of is that we were standing or walking for the better part of 5hrs for this tour and I was in a fair bit of lower back pain by the time we got back to the hotel. Normally, a sit down for an hour fixes it but not tonight…..even a spa and painkillers didn’t help! As a result, we had dinner at the hotel restaurant (Kontok) which was more than double the price of street food but was very yummy. The two curries and two soft drinks cost $37 AUD which is great value compared to Australian costs but quite high for Thailand prices.
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