6th Jan/ Day 3

Today was a bit more relaxed for the sustainability group, as we hadn’t any fieldwork scheduled for the day. However, we had a lot of fun, and managed to conduct a couple of impromptu surveys and interviews. All in all, a good day well spent.

We began by heading to Doi Suthep, a major tourist attraction and temple. It’s great to see such a majestic symbol of Buddhism – or rather, its façade, as the original one lay within. It seemed to me a great shame, that it can’t be revealed in all its glory, because it would be robbed of it – much like innocence, methinks.

Looking at the temple, I was reminded of a conversation I had with my guide, while on a hiking trip in Bhutan. He mentioned that there were 2 branches of Buddhism – Mahayana, practiced in Bhutan, where the welfare of all beings is equally emphasized, and Theravada, practiced in Thailand, where the Buddhist doctrines preached deal mostly with individual, personal welfare. Could the type of Buddhism preached affect the treatment of say, elephants? How would the Thais view animal ethics, as opposed to the Bhutanese? I do not wish to speculate, but if I had a gun pointed to my head and I had to pick one country over another as an elephant, I know which I would prefer.

Back at the hotel, our bus guide, Pramote, shared more about his extensive experience with tourists, and elephant tourism in particular. Now, he said, all domesticated elephants reproduce via artificial insemination, due to the heavy workload the tourism sector is imposing on them – honestly, on 3 hours of sleep a day, I don’t think anyone would have any energy to spare for the night. It’s no wonder that the elephant population is fast declining in the country. Thus, it looks like, the old model of elephant tourism couldn’t have sustained itself in the first place; circumstances such as changing tourist demands merely hastened the process.

Our research also looked at the awareness of tourists regarding the practices that are taking place in the elephant camps, and whether these affected their decision to go to a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ one. Pramote mentioned that tourists will usually only know which camp is which if they have done research beforehand, because, in his experience, guides don’t usually tell tourists about all these as such information tended to dampen the mood. What this means for us, then, is that only those who have a genuine interest in interacting with elephants as a primary activity would know and go for ethical elephant camps – this seems well corroborated by some of the interviews that we have done over the past few days as well. This might come in handy, as we think about how we can reach the general tourist population.

Finally, at night, in Chiang Mai University, we looked at the same issue, this time from the locals’ perspective. One of the students told us that their national syllabus unfortunately doesn’t cover all that much on elephant tourism, with what they know about the issue coming mainly from short passages found in their textbooks. As a result, many of them may not know or care about the horrors of unethical elephant tourism practices. Perhaps that could be a recommendation: schools could do more to include modules on ethics and ethical considerations, in order to make ethical elephant tourism more sustainable.

Thus far, I’ve dealt only with our research; however, the greatest takeaway, in my opinion, was the fun, laughter, and interaction with my group mates – especially in the afternoon, when we headed to the Grand Canyon (of Chiangmai, thankfully), where Cheng and Joel decided to purchase swimming trunks and dive into the lake from a height of at least 5 metres. This act probably redefined ‘sore bottoms’ for them, and required an awful lot of courage. Personally, though, I had more than my fair share of fun (a lot of singing involved, which was fun for those singing, but not those listening) while in the buggy – a one-way journey took about 1.5 hours. Road trips can be really fun, can’t they?