Slow Ride, Take It Easy

Bucket List Item Completed!: Ride an Elephant

Krabi Town, Thailand

After volunteering with the Surin Project elephant camp in northern Thailand, I have a newfound facination with all things elephants. When I originally signed up for volunteering, I think I just assumed that I would be riding an elephant sometime during the week I was there. But when I found out that it was frowned upon, I hate to say I was a little more than dissappointed. I know now why they had that rule though. The Surin elephants have spent the better part of their lives living as servants to human beings and quite honestly, they have every reason to be pissed at us. Some of them had been involved in abusive circuses and tourist scams and others were used in construction, forced to carry all the weight they could and some they couldn't. The elephants I had the priviledge to be around were only just on the way back to being normal elephants, and for tourists to ride them would defeat the purpose of the rehabilation process.

I was warned from other volunteers about their experiences with tourist elephant attractions. They told me about the violence used on the elephants and the tool of the trade, which is a wooden hand stick with a sharp, curved, metal pick at the end. Only a few mahouts, or elephant trainers, carried these picks around the Surin camp, but I never saw them being used. I was told by volunteer that our mahouts carried them in case of an emergency, like if an elephant were to spaz out and try and harm a human. Seemed ok to me, considering the ginormous size of the elephants compared to us.

Even without an elephant ride, Surin is still one of the best things I've ever been a part of and highly recommend to anyone. I mean, at the end of the day, not eveyone can say they've been swimming with elephants in a lake in Thailand. So I've got that goin' for me.

With all this taken into account, I still wanted to ride an elephant, but now I knew what to look for. I scouted out some places as I traveled around Thailand, making sure that it wasn't a sketchy tourist attraction and that the elephants seemed to be in good condition. I finally settled on one in Krabin that seemed ok.

Nosey Parker's Elephant Rides

A funny thing happened when I got to the park. I introduced my myself to the mahouts and one of them noticed the strings tied around my wrists. He kept motioning to my hands and saying, Ban Ta Klang? and then pointing to himself. I couldn't believe it, but not only did the young mahout notice that my blessing strings came from the village of Ban Ta Klang in Surin, but he was also from there. When we first arrived at the volunteer park, all of us were blessed by a local elephant shaman for doing good work for the elephants. The shaman and the other elders of the village tied blessed, yellow strings around our wrists one by one. So the mahout drawing attention to my makeshift bracelets, didn't necessarily embarass me, but it did make me feel a little weird considering I was there by myself in a group full of couples and they were now staring at me.

I noticed that only half of the mahouts were even carrying the picks at all, which made me happy because that means they can command the animals with voice commands. When they starting lining up the tourists to climb up on the elephants the mahouts seemed to be so careful with everyone else, but me they just sort of looked at and motioned to the elephant as if to say "After you. You got this, right?" For only a little while, I sat in the chair bench on the back of the elephant sauntering through the jungle, when the mahout turned around from his perch behind the animal's ears and said, "Yoo want seet heer?" Do I want to sit behind the ears of an elephant while riding through the jungle in Thailand. Like I'm gonna pass that up. At first I'm wondering if that's even allowed. I looked around at the other tourists who were all holding on for dear life in their seats, none of whom were actually riding the elephant bare back. But what did I care if anyone else was doing it. So the mahout and I manuvered to switch places and before I knew it I was in the drivers seat and the mahout was riding shotgun. You ever have one of those moments, where somehow you manage to hit pause for a second and wonder how you got to that point? I, Christina Wanderlust, was riding an elephant. Just like I always said I would. I felt like my shaman strings had achieved me magic superhero status or something. 

Total cost: 700 baht - elephant ride in jungle, feeding the elephants, transportation to and from hotel

(If you are planning on incorporating an elephant  attraction into to your future trips, please be wary of any possible abuse involved. Please do not donate money to harmful tourist scams.)

 If you'd like to volunteer at the Surin Project elephant camp, click here for more information.

Comments

[Steve]

I got to ride on an elephant for the first time in Thailand a few years ago. The elephant trainer used one of those picks on it to guide the elephant along. The elephant didn't seem to mind though so either it was used to it or it never really bothered it to begin with. Other than that, the elephant seemed to be treated really well. It was really fun and I'm glad you got to ride on one too.