A Month on an Elephant Camp

My original (though vague) plan for my year as a lone wolf was to work in Bangkok for six months and then go “travelling.” I didn’t really know where I’d go, but that was the idea. There were a few problems with that, the biggest being cash flow issues. Plane tickets are expensive and having to pay for a hotel every night is expensive. There are plenty of other reasons, but you don’t want to hear them. Because I’ve stayed in Thailand for a long time and met lots of people, I’ve had opportunities to do some great things, perhaps the most spectacular of which was the chance to live and work at Taweechai Elephant Camp.

When I first went to Chiang Mai, instead of the usual Elephant ride, trek and bamboo raft, a friend and I did a full day Mahout Course, where we learned how to control elephants and ride them. This was amazing and when I found I might have a chance to go and live at an elephant camp I worked hard to make sure it happened.

I stayed with an experienced mahout who has worked in Japan and Malaysia as well as Thailand. My routine basically consisted of waking up at 06:10 and going to collect an elephant, taking it to the river and giving it a wash. I’d have a coffee and practice Thai, before helping out with heavy lifting, ice and coconuts etc. Once the elephants all arrived in the main area and guests arrived I would help talk to guests who spoke English or Thai. At 16:30 the elephants go for another bath and are led back to the forest (the camp owns hundreds of acres of land) where they are given a long chain and are free to wander and eat until the next day. When it rained at night they would be extremely muddy the next day. I would then go do some exercise in the river, before having dinner and hanging out until around 21:00, when I would go to bed.

That’s the basic outline of things. I had intended to go to the camp to make them a new website, but their lack of internet made this basically impossible to do. Fine, I decided I could help out with the guests. The problem is most of their visitors are Russian or Taiwanese and don’t speak English. Therefore I only confused them when I “assisted” them, even though I wore a camp t-shirt. In the end, I spent almost all my time playing with elephants, lifting baskets of bananas and eating. Occasionally we’d get someone who spoke English so they’d get VIP treatment from me, but that was very rare.

This worked out fine for me, because I like elephants. The problem is that after they get to a certain age and size, all elephants are interested in doing is eating. They’re too big to play with and you can’t play with the males anyway because they’re too dangerous. I would sometimes have a big of fun with the elephants in the river, where I would scuttle across their backs while they held their breath (for about a minute) and played about, but mostly that was it. The rest of the time, I played with just two elephants, Mali and Gan Gloey. The former is a 7 year old girl who is naughty and likes to mess around, displaying a restlessness and proclivity towards boredom the other elephants didn’t show.

She would amuse herself by engaging in gymnastics and yoga, with all the grace an elephant can manage. She took to picking me up and putting me on her back, at which point she would try to shake me off. She actively enjoyed doing this and would either pick me up with her face, or turn around and insistently raise her back leg for me to climb up manually. By the end of my time at the camp she was becoming lazy around would only pick me up half-way with her trunk, preferring the rear route. Perhaps because I had put on weight, but that’s hardly justification for the laziness - a few kilograms to a 1.2 tonne grey blob is nothing.

I worked to make sure Mali liked me by not upsetting her and giving her tasty treats every day. On several occasions I would approach her and she’d open her mouth over my head and I would (carefully) let her lick my nose, which she seemed to enjoy a lot. Her very large teeth were too far away to cause damage, but I found if I tickled the sides of her mouth she would smile and I could have a look inside at her very long tongue.

Elephants do not really like it when people touch their trunks because it’s such an important tool for them, but by the end of the month, Mali would sometimes let me hold her trunk for her, which was a real sign of our friendship.

Gan Gloey is a baby boy, who was 4 months old in February. He enjoys play fighting but does not have any elephant playmates, so he plays with people instead. The problem is that he weighs over 120kg, which makes play very rough. I found I was robust enough to play with him, though only for around 10 minutes a time, and only every couple of days. When we engaged in combat, he would usually charge at me and I’d shoulder-barge him. This worked well, until he realised he was strong enough to slide me along the floor, which was dangerous because he could push me into the metal bars of the enclosure.

I still had a few tricks up my sleeve, like leap-frogging over him and trunk squeezing. He did learn fairly quickly though; as I mentioned, elephants do not really like people touching their trunks, and by grabbing his nose and squeezing I could stop Gan Gloey mid-charge. Victory! Until he discovered he could just turn around and kick me with his back leg. This was very painful. Interestingly, if I crouched on the floor, instead of charging and injurying me, Gan Gloey would gently approach, then mount me. Most people have not been mounted by a baby elephant, so let me assure you that it is very heavy and very uncomfortable.

So Gan Gloey loves ramming everything. From me, to his mum’s legs, to the barrel of dung next to his enclosure. I think what he loves most is ramming tourists. They often come and crouch very close to him. Gan Gloey moves slowly and calmly, perhaps even taking the peeled banana they offer, showing no signs of aggression. Then suddenly, he will swing his head round and ram, which gives the tourists a great fright. This is especially satisfying when they’re a bit unpleasant, like the Australian lady who threw a banana at Gan Gloey while he was sleeping so he would wake up and entertain her. He entertained her bulbous rear right into the dirt!

We had some trouble when Gan Gloey discovered he was able to climb out of his enclosure to bring the fight to me, but this was fine because he could charge and shove me around without hurting me. Sometimes when he was feeling calm he would splash about in his water bowl, which made the water very dirty.

Overall, playing with the elephants was magical and I learned a lot about them. One thing in particular is that they are very quiet. They do have their little inaudible low-frequency communication trick and occasionally bellow very loudly, but for the most part they don’t make any noise, and can walk very quietly. I look forward to going back to visit the camp in April, once the Red Shirts stop blocking Rachadamnoen Road and I can get the minibus to Kanchanaburi.

I won't be updating this blog any more - go to The Penang Blog to see my new and exciting Malaysia blog!