Hey People,

today I would like to share our trip to the Ran-tong (Save & Rescue centre) - an Elephant Sanctuary based north of Chiang Mai in Thailand. Ranton is dedicated to the protection and conversation of Asian Elephants.

Here are the main reasons (taken from their website) why we considered going there:

• no abuse of elephants for tricks
• no separation of babies from their mother
• rescue from loggings and street begging
• better quality of life for the elephants
• watch them in there natural habitat
• interact with them
• learn about them

The visit to this park left a strong impression on us. For some unknown reason elephants are my favorite animals. I am not sure why but they just are. Maybe because they appear calm, strong and majestic without needing to be aggressive in their presence. But of course you would never want to get into a fight with one of these :D

As always in Asia and in Thailand in particular elephants are being abused for the tourism industry in order to make profits. At the side of the road in touristic areas you will see so many elephants which have to stay all day long in the tiniest spaces. Everyone knows the stories about elephants being trained by using hooks that go deeply into their flesh. So for us it was clear that we would go to a sanctuary where the elephants are able to live a decent life.

We came by bus to the sanctuary and were separated into two groups. One group with elephant riding and one without. Since I was not sure if elephant riding is a problem in general we decided not do it. So we were only a small group of three people who did not ride them.

Feeding

At first we got some traditional clothing (I guess, I am not sure if it was traditional. But it looked more traditional and also cool :D ) and a bag filled with sugar canes. The sanctuary looked like a huge wild garden with some huts, small hills and a small river. There we waited for the arrival of the elephants. They came with three workers who took care of the elephants and seemed to know them really well. It was amazing how they were able to communicate with the elephants. To our surprise they were acutally two baby elephants and one adolescent elephant. The two smaller elephants came at first and they were adorable and had good manners. We could feed them one cane after another. But then the third larger elephant came and he was very aggressive. He wanted to take all of our canes at once. It was very uncomfortable since we did not know how to behave. He had already about 2 meters height and was very strong. After a while the workers actually had to take him away from us because he was two aggressive.

Bathing

In the second phase we went to bath with the elephants. Oh – what an amazing feeling! It was really great to just play, bath and scrub with the elephants. All of a sudden one of the workers yelled: “ oh chocolate“ and he literally took pieces of elephant poop from the water and threw them out. For about half an hour we were in the water and time passed by like that.
()

Just as we came out of the water we saw the other group. They actually were riding really large elephants and apparently it was okay. I am not exactly sure any more of the reason but I think it was because the elephants had no seats that poked into the elephant's flesh. And also since a large elephant is carrying so much weight with him all day long, one person more or less on the back does not matter for him. I really had the impression that the elephant was enjoying himself. It was noticeable as well that they had so much space. The area was huge!

Chopping Sugar Canes

At the end we had the opportunity and the obligation to cut new sugar canes for the next group so they could also feed the elephant. We sat bare-feet on the floor of a small hut and just chopped many many sugar canes into smaller pieces.

Recommended!

Overall it was a great experience! The elephants were not pressured at all and we did not ride them. So I felt really good about that :) I hope you enjoyed the read and when you are in Chiang Mai definitely consider going there!