Tong Bai Elephant Foundation

While Jenna and I were in Bangkok, we heard about the Elephant Nature Park, which is run by a government organization that is about an hour outside of Chiang Mai. We tried to sign up to volunteer for a week, feeding elephants, maintaining gardens for their food, etc, but found out there is not an opening to volunteer until June! Instead we heard about the Tong Bai Elephant Foundation, which is close to the Elephant Nature Park. I am so glad we did this because not only did each of us get to spend the day with our 'own' elephant, but we also helped contribute to an organization that is working to take captive, work elephants and provide them enriched and leisurely lives.

Here we are greeting our elephants for the first time. My elephant's name is Mae Gaeo. Mae, means mother. Jenna's elephant's name is Mae Kaphat. Mae Gaeo is in her fifties and has been with TBEF for a little less than a decade. She was a work elephant that used to walk in circles bearing people on her back. Unfortunately, this is the common life of an elephant in captivity. They are expensive to own and to take care of especially with all of the food that they eat. With the cessation of the logging industry in Thailand, elephants are used predominately for carting tourists around cities, which is an insult to their intelligence, to generate money for those that care for them and to feed the elephants.

Before we went on our walk, we took to elephants to get some water. They drank it straight from the spiket, actually pulling the PVC pipe off at one point in their eagerness to drink more water. Man were they thirsty! Mae Gaeo would fill up her trunk with water, maybe for about 45 seconds, and then dump the water from her trunk into her mouth. One of the girl's that was with us found out that not all of the water ends up in each of the elephant's mouth.

Mae Gaeo is such a sweetie! Mae Gaeo and the rest of the elephants periodically stopped to nom on some delicious vegetation on our walk to the river.

Mae Gaeo got her trunk on a plump-looking gourd. It took her a couple of tries to get it into her mouth, but once she did she munched it happily. Elephant trunks are composed only of lots of muscle and some fat. A fun little fact is that the closest relative to the Asian elephant is the Mamoth. The African and Asian elephant are within the same family but are in genus Elephas and Loxodonta, respectively.

Mae Kaphat, Jenna's elephant, loved rubbing and scratching her body on trees that we walked past.

Here is a little meadow that we passed.

Here is the line of us. Mae Gaeo was the last of the four elephants. The guy in the blue hat is Mae Gaeo's mahout, Dela. Mahouts are the people that care for elephants though it is much more than that. Each elephant has one mahout that it recognizes and respects. This is not only a relationship of necessity but also an emotionally intimate one. It used to be that an elephant and a mahout would spend their whole lives together, but that is no longer a reality. Mahouts tend to be younger men that stay with an elephant for a while, a decade or so, until they get married and are ready to start a family. Elephants take a lot of money to support and caring for them takes time. Now it is difficult to be a mahout and to support a family.

Once we got to the river, the batheing began! The elephants are bathed everyday by the mahouts to scrub away parasites.

I am making a ridiculous face in this photo but I just had to share. When Mae Gaeo was lying down in the river, Dela and Melanie (in the hat) helped me climb up on Mae Gaeo. I sat right behind her ears for only a couple of minutes. I was up so high and felt a bit unsteady when she stared walking around. I am so glad I did it though!

Here is the whole group with our elephants. Jenna's elephant wandered off during this photo shoot ;)

We had such a lovely time with these beautiful ladies!

Great job Tong Bai Elephant Foundation! If anyone is or will be in Chaing Mai, Thailand on a Saturday or Wednesday, I ABSOLUTELY recommend going and checking out the awesome things TBEF is doing!