Day 1: Elephant Nature Park! ???

Day 1: On our first official day in Chiang Mai, we got up early for a bus journey to the Elephant Nature Park, an elephant rescue centre where old and injured elephants are nursed back to health and cared for in a natural environment. Having read numerous rave reviews about the park while conducting research prior to our trip, I was truly looking forward to getting up close and personal with the elephants and finding out for myself whether the park lives up to its name!

When we first arrived at the Elephant Nature Park, I was absolutely unprepared for what I saw – several stray cats and dogs running across the grounds of the park! Since young, I have had a really deep irrational fear of cats and dogs that I have never been able to overcome, and never in my worst fears had I ever expected the elephant park to be teeming with cats and dogs! In that single instant, all the excitement and hopes that I had borne for my visit to the elephant park dwindled, and I became really worried about how I was going to conduct research in the park, much less have fun or enjoy myself.

After some attempts of trying to evade all the cats and dogs in the park, I eventually came to terms with my circumstances. Acknowledging that the Elephant Nature Park was an entirely different environment from Singapore, I decided that I had to adapt myself to the environment of the park to make the most of the trip, and work towards overcoming my fears rather than let them get the better of me! #optimism

I gave up on trying to maintain a clear distance away from the cats and dogs. Instead, I decided to simply walk quickly past them while avoiding eye contact in the hopes that they would not come nearer to me. Even though I would still involuntarily panic whenever a cat came too close for comfort, I felt that my attempt to walk alongside my fears was definitely one step towards overcoming them!

Learning to pay less attention to my fears truly made the rest of my visit at the Elephant Nature Park so much more engaging and enjoyable. I really wish I’d tried to face this fear sooner!

The day’s activities begun with an elephant feeding session, after which we visited various elephants around the park. According to our guide, Jen, most of the elephants in the park had been put through incredibly traumatic and dangerous experiences by humans.

For instance, there was an elephant who had broken her back from being made to carry heavy tourist carriages for extensive periods of time. There was also another elephant who had a badly deformed leg as a result of stepping on a landmine, and several others which had been blinded by circus lights or hooks. It was really distressing to learn the ugly side of how humans exploit these elephants for their own economic gain, without a heed to their well-being.

Despite having researched on the sort of abuse that elephants are subjected to in the elephant tourism industry, witnessing their scars and disfigurements in person still inadvertently surprised me, as the reality of their circumstances finally sank in. This is really happening. Tourism is really placing a toll on them, and it’s simply not right that humans should be allowed to inflict such pain and torture on these gentle creatures.

I am glad that ethical elephant parks, such as the Elephant Nature Park, exist to provide a sanctuary for these mistreated elephants. The park truly treats its elephants with love and adoring care, evident from one of the elephants we met at the park. This elephant has a big, gaping hole in one of her ears because her previous trainer (‘mahout’) had poked a large hook into her ear to control her for logging work. While it was troubling to imagine the sheer pain that the elephant must have felt during the process, it was equally heartwarming to see her new mahout at the Elephant Nature Park tenderly place a fresh flower into the hole in her ear to cover up her scar, creating beauty in place of deformity.

Although my first official day at Chiang Mai began with a rocky start, the knowledge and experiences that I have picked up at the Elephant Nature Park certainly compensated for my initial anxiety. With a newfound adoration for elephants, I headed to bed with an anticipation for the following day’s activities.