Elephant Camp

I went with the children on the Sunday outing to an elephant camp, I had read about this and it was already on my list of things I wanted to see while I was here in Thailand. My first impression was that this is just a place where tourists go and spend money, but I was wrong. The elephants were all well taken care of, other than that these elephants eat too much junk food - bananas and sugar cane sticks that people can purchase for 30 baht ($0.75) and feed to the elephants up close. I would recommend bringing your own bananas if anyone visits the camp because a bunch of bananas for 30 baht is a rip off. You can get bunches of bananas for free by picking them yourself from a tree on the side of the road anywhere in Thailand, and at the market a bunch of bananas only costs 5 baht ($0.13). I assume the money goes towards maintaining the camp, feeding the elephants good food and paying the wages. Other than the expensive bananas, the show we saw was great, it is difficult to describe and is much better in person than words can say, but the saying is true that “an elephant never forgets.” I have never seen elephants perform such amazing tricks. They were able to ring a bell and raise a flag, kick a soccer ball into a goal with their feet, dunk a basketball with their trunks, do all sorts of acrobatic tricks and paint with color on paper and t-shirts that people can buy later. You might think all elephants in Thailand perform in these types of shows, but this comes from months of training. Elephants in Thailand were originally used for pulling the logs of teak wood out of the jungles after they were cut down. Today, the Thai government has outlawed all logging of teak, so the elephants have become more of a symbol of how important they are in Thai society. The current Thai king uses an elephant as a symbol of his nobility on his red and yellow flags that are flown everywhere in Thailand. At the elephant camp there was also a place to ride the elephants, but since half the kids were too scared to even touch the elephants with their hands when the elephant reached its trunk over to the audience to get bananas and sugar cane sticks, there was no riding the elephants this day. This was one of the most exciting outings I have gone on with the kids yet.