Elephant Jungle, Build a Road!

Our volunteering escapades with Elephant Nature Park have amplified this past week! We took our 13 volunteers to ENP's new private property with the important tasks of building the road up there and tree planting to reforest the once heavily logged area.

The property will one day be a second sanctuary for rescued elephants, and we hope to make it a jungle paradise for them, ripe with sweet fruits and tasty native trees the elephants will someday feast on!

The biggest mission for this project is construction of a road. Right now the only way in and out of the property is a mud track, and in the rainy season only 4 wheel drive trucks can make it through since the road actually washes away in big chunks. 2 years ago we started this project, and now I have returned to the same project, the same road and all the same challenges!

I have led volunteer groups through the construction of over 4 road culverts (water filtration systems designed to limit road erosion) on that property now, putting in over 100 man hours and shedding buckets of sweat and ripped callouses into every batch of hand-made concrete! The work is so hard: physically demanding; the heat and mosquito infested jungle can make you feel like you are losing your mind; and on top of that we deal with the strain of sharing an accommodation with 16 people (and all sorts of poisonous wildlife) with electricity for only 4 hours each day and only 1 cold bucket shower....that's right, just take a second to imagine that... Yet, at the end of the day when you get the job done and you survive the elements, you feel indestructible!





Our accommodation is remote, simple, bare, but beautiful. While my volunteers tend to struggle without electricity and heated showers, I feel right at home here. I skipped the line for the shower nearly every day, choosing instead to bathe in the river just down the hill from our hut.

The poisonous wildlife made life exciting, especially the night one of my volunteers nearly stepped on a poisonous centipede. (Imagine a centipede with fiery orange colored legs, the length of a bookmark!) Even more terrifying was the fact that this centipede was crawling its way up the stairs into our living quarters...*shudder*

Please note: this particular species of centipede in Thailand is toxic enough to kill small dogs and can seriously incapacitate adults for several days. The Thai way of handling these critters is to scream your bloody head off, jump around frantically to avoid their speedy fast mad-driven crawling, and then cut their heads off with sharp tools. This we did with great relief.


(pictured here: our jungle hut accommodation; and my private tent on the balcony)

We also put our hands in the construction of a super-adobe mud-house. A first for me! This house will eventually be an information center for the project and local forest, and we're attempting to build it with all natural and recycled materials: mud house, thatch roofs, recycled glass windows and tires for structural stability, and a sticky tapioca mixture for natural glue.



The tree planting was hard work since the sun beat down on us nearly every day, but the end result will be great! In a couple years these young trees will up be up and blooming, and forest life will eventually rejuvenate itself.

Sao Yai, The Rescued Elephant

Sometimes the job is just the job. Sometimes the job is your life. I'm not sure which category I fall into. More and more it feels like my personal life is slipping away from me, and I can't differentiate between job satisfaction and personal achievement.

Maybe this isn't such a terrible thing, considering that yesterday I got to witness a miracle.

I've been at the Elephant Nature Park this week with a group of 13 volunteers from the USA and Canada. The last time I led a project here was nearly 2 years ago to the day. I cried heartily when I left last time, because I was bound for New Zealand and I wasn't sure if or when I would be coming back. The day I turned up at the park again it felt like coming home; my best friends welcomed me, not too much had changed and I fell back easily into my old routine.

We've been working incredibly hard: cutting enough corn to feed 35 elephants; shoveling poop from shelters spread out all over the property; assisting with the veterinary care for elephants that are sick and injured; handling tons (literally 3-4 tons daily) of pumpkin and watermelon to be washed, cut and fed to the elephants; and handling the daily maintenance/repairs required around the park (i.e. fencing, planting trees, repairing shelters.)

Earlier this week Lek (the founder) gave us some incredible news. She, with the help of donations and foreign sponsors, was able to buy and rescue another elephant from a neighboring trekking camp. This elephant, Sao Yai, is precious to Lek since she had temporarily taken care of her nearly a decade ago. Back then, Lek did not have the land or money to be able to buy Sao Yai, so this was a great personal triumph for Lek on many levels.

Since Lek last treated her, Sao Yai has been living her life locked in a camp where elephants are subjected to beatings and heavy tourists clamoring onto their backs, each of them suffering years of abusive riding. She has had her babies stolen from her, and she has worked day in and day out for her owner and handlers to make a meager living. For Sao Yai now, all of this was about to end...forever.

Thursday morning we finished our chores (you guessed it, shoveling poop!) and hitched a ride to the elephant camp where Sao Yai was waiting for us. She was freed from her foot chains, fed a batch of freshly chopped bananas, and eagerly welcomed by all of us. Her handler (mahout) led her out the front gate, onto the foot path towards the Park, and we started walking together.

We walked with her for 2 hours, slow and steady, up the road to the Park and encouraged her all the way with sweet bananas and water poured directly from our water bottles into her soft-tipped trunk.

The moment we turned off the main road, and finally set foot on ENP property a cheer erupted from every one of us as we realized that never again, will she suffer at the hands of man. One more elephant life saved and spared!

We bathed her and led her gently to Jokia and Mae Perm. These elephants were two of Lek's first rescues, and old friends of Sao Yai. After decades apart, it was obvious that after a few gentle sniffs and trumpets the small pack welcomed her back and remembered her intimately.

It's true, an elephant never forgets.

She's only been at the park for less than 24 hours now, so we'll have to watch her carefully and see how she's received by other members in the herd. Our hopes are high that she will be welcomed warmly, and adopt a new family herd of her own to live out the rest of her happy days as a beautiful, strong and healthy elephant.

It was such an honor to be a part of this experience, and I will cherish the memory always.

Sleeping With Elephants: Chiang Mai, Thailand

Overnight trip to Elephant Nature Park

...sleeping with giants, cycling through rice paddies, and planting trees with the local children = the perfect weekend.

I once said I had a love affair with Thailand. Elephant Nature Park is a big part of that love affair... maybe obsession is the word I'm looking for.

The sanctuary is home to 32 elephants, all of them rescued from an abusive tourism industry. They roam free everyday, unchained and happy to spend their days bathing in the river, grazing, toppling fruit trees and chasing the dogs around the park. They don't perform tricks, they don't paint, they don't dance, they don't beg for money in the streets of Bangkok or Chiang Mai, and they don't carry tourists on their backs anymore...they just simply exist as nature intended, as gentle giants.

The State of Asian Elephants Today...

Asian Elephants are struggling to survive. No one knows exactly how many are left in the wild, but here in Thailand the numbers are in the low hundreds. People say that in 30 years or so, they'll be wiped out from the wild completely because of loss of habitat, cities expanding, poaching and the black market ivory trade that still persists throughout Asia.

Let's put one thing in perspective. The number of wild elephants in Thailand are in the low hundreds. The number of domesticated elephants working in the tourism industry are in the thousands.

Thai people revere elephants. Elephants are the vehicles of kings, they were tanks in times of war during the ancient kingdoms of Siam, they're spiritual guides, they're demi-gods and symbols of luck and grace so important to the foundation of Thai history and culture. You can't go a city block anywhere without coming across an elephant in one form or another, and even worse it's harder to go one night in Chiang Mai or Bangkok and not come across baby elephants begging in the city streets for food and money.

How did this happen? As most atrocities do...lack of education and awareness.

Asian Elephants have a tradition of being domesticated. This has existed for nearly 2,000 years already. They were used in battles, they were used in royal ceremonies, more recently used as loggers in the money making Teak industry, then finally today used as entertainment. When the government banned logging in the 1980's, thousands of elephants and their owners were out of work and dying in the jungles. So the idea of elephant tourism was embraced to initially help them...until now, it's just spiraled out of control.

Tourists come to Thailand with the big idea of riding on the back of an elephant in a green jungle. What they don't realize is everything that happens behind the scenes. The process of training an elephant happens at a very young age. Around 3 or 4 years, babies are separated from their mothers and placed in violent crushes: sleep deprivation, torture, cutting, bashing, and gouging from metal hooks are common place in a training process that can last months.

The theory is barbaric: break your elephant at the youngest age possible and teach him to fear man. It is the fear and constant reminder of the trauma from this training process that allows tourists to ride elephants today.

The more elaborate the tricks an elephant is taught, like circus performance, the longer the training process and the more violence involved.

What's happening now in Thailand, is that every year more and more tourists demand elephant entertainment. More efforts are being put into building this elephant tourism industry, and less energy focused on restoring the dying wild populations. The cycle of suffering needs to stop. Tourists need to make educated choices, people relying on elephants for work and livelihood need to be given access to a new set of skills and work, and elephants need to stay off the city streets and remain in the forest where they belong.

What Elephant Nature Park represents, is a new hope for the future generations of Asian elephants. Domestic elephants who have been rescued from abusive owners and street begging are brought here to the sanctuary to live out their lives in peace. The only interaction with tourists allowed are feeding times and bathing times. Tourists directly bring joy to elephants, and not the other way around. The point, is to spend a day or a week in the presence of elephants acting as they would naturally in the wild.

Elephant Nature Park is my heaven on earth. It's a wildlife rescue project, a community development arm and a source of inspiration for all of us around it. The founder, Lek, has her hands in everything: working with elephants, stray dogs and wildlife rescued from illegal trafficking; reaching out and hiring from within Burmese refugee camps; tree planting and forestry development to restore the jungle; creating jobs for local farmers since 32 elephants demand a lot of food sources; sending volunteers into local communities to help with funding and construction of every day needs like water tanks, temples, bridges, and roads...she can do anything. One day at her park and you'll be overwhelmed with the amount of good work being done, I guarantee it.

Overnight at the Park....

One of the first things I did when I got back to Thailand this month, was visit the park. For anyone with a couple days to kill in Chiang Mai, I highly recommend staying overnight. Day visits are great too, but overnight allows you to see a lot more of what rural life in Thailand is really all about.

The park highlights include washing and bathing with the elephants twice a day, as well as up close encounters with feeding every day. There are babies that are constantly playing and getting into trouble, so keep your cameras loaded for some awesome photography.

The accommodations are nice, and the food is mind-blowing. Your night's stay will be more than comfortable. An extra full day at the park will allow you the time for a bicycle tour of the area if you're game.

Ride through the forest, across the Mae Taeng river, through fields of rice paddies and flowering tress, and hike the steps up to the local forest temple with a guide from the park more than happy to teach you the basics of Buddhism and temple history.

And there's always something going on at the park that needs a few extra hands. When I was there it was my dear friend Lek's (the founder) birthday. In honor of her, the local community and children worked hand in hand with volunteers to plant 500 trees in and around the park as her yearly "Green Forest Day" program.

If you have a couple days, stay overnight. If you're limited, the one day visit will be just as awesome. Prices and booking information can be found at the Elephant Nature Foundation website here....

If you have more time, consider volunteering for the week. Read about my experiences volunteering here...(Prices and booking for volunteering is also available at the Elephant Nature Foundation website.)

Asian Elephants are not the only ones suffering: gibbons, monkeys, bears, tigers...so many animals need your help in Asia...volunteer your time and energy into making a difference next time you travel.

Video: Moon Bears in Laos & Vietnam need help too!

more info here...Animals Asia.org

For a list of volunteer organizations I've worked with here in Thailand, scroll to the end of my post here 'Thailand: Paradise or Not?'...

If you have shared similar experiences with wildlife conservation or community development projects around the world, please share them and let us know where we can lend a hand next!

Xmas Lady Boy Cabaret Show at ENP, Thailand 2009

Posted: Aug.2010, Written Dec.2009

Right now...it's the morning of the 25th for you, so Merry Christmas!!! I've got 97.3 Coast FM tuned in on my lap top right now, and sappy Christmas songs are making me sentimental...time for a mass email then! I hope the family's together somewhere, and having an awesome holiday season now.

My Christmas celebration was last night...and even though I was far away from friends and family in America, I was surrounded by new friends and family here in Thailand. (Much improved from last year's lonely beach getaway!) Lek (the founder) invited me to celebrate X-Mas with her at Elephant Nature Park. They were planning a huge feast and a jungle party with the elephants...they offered to put me up and promised me I didn't have to work or do any manual labor to earn my keep--I was very happy with this arrangement.

I decided to rent a car, and brought Chad and his wife along too. They're fellow Americans and recently moved here to Chiang Mai, so they don't have any friends of their own yet. They're great people and also from South Florida- so they bring a little piece of home with their company. We rented a truck and made our way to the park yesterday afternoon.

Before pulling off into the jungle, we stopped at a Tesco-Lotus supermarket to stock up on goods. We were just planning to buy one or two bottles of wine, but of course it was 4 pm. Between the hours of 7am-11am, and 3.30pm-5pm you're not allowed to buy alcohol in stores and supermarkets (something about keeping kids from buying booze.) We were sad and putting the bottles back when one of the store clerks added with a wink and a smile "if you buy 12 liters, OK."

12 liters of alcohol....that would come out to 14 massive bottles of beer, and 3 or 4 bottles of wine....We knew this was going to be a good night! We loaded up our stash and were off to the park again. (Kicking ourselves later, for not remembering to buy painkillers for the hangover this morning....) I was fully expecting Lek to stash us somewhere in the park, out of sight out of mind and more importantly out of the way! However, she saved the VIP bungalows for us; bungalows in the park I never knew existed! Big plushy king sized beds, fluffy pillows, and private showers....definitely an improvement from the usual hut I live in when I'm leading projects at the park.

Dinner at the park was a feast, as usual...but my highlight was dim sum! OOOOOOOOOooooooohhhh dim sum with shrimp and pork, and BBQ (Thai style, with grilled chilies), and of course cheap French wine to keep our throats from getting dry. After dinner people from the local village swarmed the park and Santa came on stage to give out presents sponsored by ENP to all the kiddies and their families. Christmas music and carolers started the evening off alright, and it was just starting to feel like home...until the mahouts (elephant handlers) came out.

The mahouts are all minority peoples, from remote Burmese villages. So imagine my shock and surprise when they swarmed the stage in short skirts and costumes that were glittery, feathery and sparkling, and enough make up to actually look pretty as girls! They did a series of traditional dances set to flutes and drums which was normal enough...but they pranced around on stage in drag! These men are little, but incredibly strong! I mean they spend their days bossing massive elephants around and living off the jungle, so they have to be tough! I think I was more shocked at how good some of them looked as girls...how did they manage to make their make up look so nice??? And their short skirts... *shudder*..., they definitely were not aware of having to keep your legs together when you're in a skirt!

Then the lady boy cabaret show began. They hired professional dancers and DJs from the city for this event. These girls (or men?) were HOT! Beautiful bodies and costumes made it soooooo easy to forget they were men. (Which I think caused some physical confusion for some very drunk mahouts later on that night...) Anyways the dancers were incredible! The music was everything you expect- Gloria Estefan and Aretha Franklin and a nice mix of Korean pop. I'm embarrassed to admit that when "I will survive" came on, I pushed myself onto the stage for a bit....I blame the cheap Filipino beer for that move. And I WILL NEVER LIVE THAT DOWN AT THE PARK FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE.

One of the ladyboys spent the entire night performing with her right boob coming out of her sparkly bikini top...of course she couldn't feel her boobs, so she had no idea! For nearly one hour we were all glued to her boob, thinking one of two things: men, thinking 'why does this feel so wrong?'; girls, thinking 'damn they're nicer than mine!' I wonder what the small children thought....they definitely got more than an eyeful! Then...Patty came out. Patty is the lady boy who runs the ENP office in Chiang Mai city. She's one of the sweetest people in the world, always giggling and smiling. (She came out to the hospital when I was sick to check on me now and again, always keeping me company.) She was definitely the star of the show, doing a solo number as a Chinese pop/folk star in full traditional wardrobe....no words can describe how bizarre this was.

After the lady boys left back to Chiang Mai, the dance party began...and this is about the time my memory starts to fade. I remember Chad grabbing another bottle of wine, and then...everything goes black from that point on. I remember dancing, on stage and off, and taking a ton of photos with the staff. And then I remember Burm (one of the staff and a good friend) walked me back to my bungalow and actually tucked me into my bed. Ohhhh, soooooo bad.

This morning was brutal. I stayed in bed until I thought I wasn't going to die anymore and faced the music. Literally, when I came out everyone started making fun of me singing and dancing "I will survive." Ugh, I'm pretty sure I was filmed during that too. Lek gave me a beautiful present, a silver pendant with the personalized ENP logo to add to my charm necklace and I left the park feeling like I had spent one of the best holidays I could have asked for away and alone from the family.

Volunteer with Elephant Nature Park, Thailand, 2009

posted: Aug.2010, written: June.2009

I've been leading a volunteer project at an Elephant Rehab center, called Elephant Nature Park. My daily tasks have been cutting grass and corn for the eles to feed (i am now a machete savante!), planting native trees for a reforestation project, shoveling shit (elephant shit, buffalo shit, dog shit, cow shit, pig shit, you name the animal---we've shoveled it!), stripping bark from Eucalyptus trees for construction use (sounds easy...but try using the machetes to strip bark in the blaring sun!), and digging trenches (1 meter wide, 100 meters long, 1 meter deep) to install an underwater pipeline to get water from one side of the park to the other.

I have cuts and scrapes all along my forearms from the grass, sunburnt arms (from the shoulder down), dirt so engrained in my nails and hair it repels soap, and am eating 4 meals of rice and noodles a day to keep my energy up! I'm a reformed Thai farm girl now !! :)

Working alongside these elephants is such an incredible and unique experience...I get to go to sleep to the sounds of elephants snoring every night. I also get to bathe with them daily and scratch their hides every time they want :) We have a couple elephants who like to hang around our bungalows. Our bugalows are built into a fig tree, so every morning around 5:30 am I wake up to an elephant face peeking through my window. Tong Su (Jungle Boy) has tuskers too, so on more than one occasion he's poked his tuskers thru my window searching my room for goodies to play with. His mahout, or elephant handler, is a new friend so he likes to let Jungle Boy give me my morning scare every day--he says it's good for me.

In a few hours, I'll be piling back into a truck with my students heading back to the park. We came into Chiang Mai for one night off of shopping, partying and eating! My group is amazing, so energetic and happy all the time! Shoveling shit is actually one of their favorite times of day, since they like to chase me around the park shooting poop bullets at me!

Tomorrow we head to the mountain top, and stay in the jungle with the Lahu hill-tribe. We'll be doing a community development project there for one week, helping the villagers build a bridge---details of how, where, and why unknown. As everything else in Thailand, the pieces of this puzzle need to fall into place at the last possible second!

July 2009: New Baby Born at the Park!

2 nights ago, Mae Dok Ngern gave birth to a brand new baby boy elephant. I woke up around 4 am to the screams and moans of the mother (loud enough to sound like a t-rex!!!) and rushed out of my bed just in time to see the baby roll out with the sac. The baby rolled out (quite ungracefully!) and was standing and walking immediately, it was amazing!

I woke up my group, and the whole morning we spent with the mother and her new born baby. Lek came rushing from Chiang Mai, and named him Chang Yim "Smiling Elephant", fitting since he's already an incredibly cheeky and naughty bugger. He's huge too! He's nearly just as big as Fah Mai, the baby girl who's nearly 1 1/2 months old now, who's his roommate...(the same baby, Steph, Maddy and I crawled into the pen with to scrub and kiss.)

Here' s the best part, nearly an hour after the baby birth the placenta came rolling out of the mother...the "afterbirth" just like a human. The mahouts grabbed the placenta, cleaned out the blood, and cooked it up. After a special animist ceremony (asking for blessings from the spirits) they drank and danced all night alongside the baby and the new mother and ate the placenta for its 'power of healing' and goodluck.

...I politely refused my piece...saying that "I simply had too much rice today".

Even more exciting is the fact that this new baby boy is the property of Lek and ENP. This baby, like Hope, will never ever ever have to go to the Pajan (the violent training process involved in domesticating elephants) and will NEVER be used for the entertainment of tourists. He will live his life as a happy, healthy, beautiful elephant.

And...MORE! Mae Malaetong (the ele whose foot was blown off by stepping on a land mine) she's PREGNANT! The vet just confirmed, she will be giving birth in nearly one month's time (hopefully with my next group too!) And again...a baby owned by Lek and ENP.

Lek seems to be successfully repopulating the Asian ele population in the North of Thailand...now we just need to get the new property up and running so the eles can be free in the jungle in a safe environment, away from the people.

Things are great!