Mae Sa Elephant Camp is one of the bigger elephant camps of Chiang Mai. Located in the Mae Rim area, about 40 minutes from the city center, the camp has grown significantly since the last time I visited them about four years ago. The camp now has close to 70 elephants! Still a great show, but due to the high demand an increasing tourists in the area, it is somewhat commercialized, and also caters for big tour groups, so don’t expect a quiet intimate time with the elephants by any means.
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| Each elephant and it's trainer are listed on the board. |
In saying this, they put on a great show for a price of 110 baht per person (4 USD) – starting with watching the elephants bathe in the river with their mahouts (elephant trainer – each elephant has their very own personal trainer), and then continue on to do an hour long show, showing the talents and intelligence of the elephants. I (PW) was even picked out from the big audience, to play darts with one of the elephants – undoubtedly, the elephant won! (his darts were 5x as big as mine though!!) They finish the show with 5 or so elephants each painting a quite impressive painting with their trunks, which then sold from 3000-6000 baht each (100 to 200 USD)!! Quite a good little money making venture for them!
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| Pamela playing a game of darts with an elephant during the main show. |
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| This elephant was a fantastic painter. |
Once the show is finished, it’s time to get up close and personal with the elephants, taking pictures with them while they wrap their trunks around your neck and pose with you. They then keep poking you with their trunks, or tapping their trunks on the ground asking for tips,(all under direction of the mahout of course!) this is quite cute at first – until you realize how carried away you get putting the money in their trunks having a great old time!
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| The elephant put the hat on Pamela's head. |
After that, we looked around the elephant camp while we were waiting for our elephant ride, as there were a few big tour groups in that day, they were booked out until 1pm to get a ride straight after the show. It worked out well though, as you can walk around the camp and check out the elephant gallery containing all the different elephant’s artworks for sale. They also have an elephant nursery – where they had a few elephant babies around 6 months old. SO cute! Not so well trained though at that age – he liked to grab your fingers and hands while you were feeding him bananas, and try and pull them out of there socket if you were not careful! Just being playful, but unaware of his own strength!
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| The baby elephant was a bit rough. |
We chose to do the 1hr elephant ride at a cost of 600 baht per person (20 USD), as opposed to the half hour option at 400 baht per person, as the hour tour took you into the actual jungle surrounding the camp, instead of just through the elephant camp/village. As it is the wet season here, the path through the jungle we took was quite swamp like and muddy, and quite amazing to watch the elephants being such big elephants, so eloquently step through the thick mud, using all the same foot holes as each other. Towards the end of the trek, the elephants wash off in the river, and cool down, the fastest our elephant walked on the whole trip was to get into the water! While the elephants were all drinking and cooling off, someone spotted quite a big snake on the river bank – next thing one of the mahouts was jumping off his elephants and down onto the snake, pegging him under the hook of his elephants stick, grabbing him by the tail, and then hacking his head off with the hook. Crazy, just no fear at all!
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| Going into the river on the elephants. |
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| Riding the elephant through the jungle. |
All in all, a great experience. Dave loved it too, it was his first time to ride an elephant, and get so up close and personal with these friendly giants. It’s just amazing to see how well trained they are, and how much they love human interaction. There is such a trusting and great relationship between the mahout and the elephants, it’s hard to understand and really see that without experiencing it in person.
Cheers for Now –
Pamela and Dave
Right now it's 6:30 PM PDT on Sunday August 21.
ReplyDeleteWhat this means is that all of us living on the West Coast of the U.S. need to write to wish Dave a Happy Birthday in about 15-1/2 hours from now when he turns 33 on August 23, 2011.
You may also wish to acknowledge the third anniversary of his first sighting of the most wonderful (former) Pamela Platt. August 23 is also the date they met while on safari in Africa.
So, if you are at work at about 9:00 AM PDT tomorrow, how about writing something nice to both of them.
Don't worry if they don't write back soon, Their Tuesday is a traveling day when they leave Hanoi and travel to Da Nang.