First off, all I’m gonna say about Chiang Mai is it was hands down my favorite spot in all of Thailand. And day one got us off to such a good start there was no chance of that changing.
The first thing we did when we arrived at our hostel the night before was sign up for a elephant sanctuary and rafting tour combo that someone had recommended to my friend but despite the early morning departure we were so hyped to see elephants that we managed to wake up pretty easily.
For reference, we stayed at Chiang Mai Gate Capsule Hostel which was AWESOME mainly because the woman running the place is incredibly nice and has a lot of agreements with the local tours and can get you pretty hefty discounts, including her price for the elephant tour.
Anyway, HOW ARE YOU NOT STOKED WHEN THIS IS THE FIRST THING YOU SEE TO START YOUR DAY?
The elephant sanctuary we went to doesn’t allow you to ride the elephants (since that’s really bad for them and has been a huge issue in Thailand), but instead lets you feed, swim with, and bathe the elephants. All of the elephants were rescued from elephant riding camps, lumber yards (probably the worst place an elephant can work, and there was even a baby elephant taken from a circus.
The sanctuary is relatively new and only had 5 elephants, all of which are female. It’s much harder for them to rescue male elephants just because the price for them is much higher due to their demand for physical labor jobs - like the lumber yards. The lumber yards will essentially starve the elephants so that they will pull the huge logs behind them as they are offered food.
Back to nicer topics - if you give the elephants grass they literally couldn’t care less about you so you can take pictures with them. Of course we look awkward in all of them.
3 of the elephants are really friendly with each other so they all hang out (2 of them are mother and daughter), the 4th is a baby elephant from the elephant that just loves to run around and bother everyone, and the 5th was a new elephant they had just rescued from a lumber yard that wasn’t comfortable yet really with the other elephants or people and had to be isolated. She had been there for about 2 weeks and we were actually the first group of people that were able to feed her since she was gradually acclimating to people - even our tour guide was super excited because it was his first time being able to feed her as well! (And also his birthday so how about that).
The baby elephant, coming from a circus, had been trained to give hugs and kisses so yes, I GOT KISSES FROM A BABY ELEPHANT. Although the keepers didn’t warn me that it was going to happy so I mildly freaked the heck out when the trunk came for me.
After feeding and playing with the elephants for a while we also got to help make medicine for them. Basically turmeric rolled up and hidden in rice balls so that the elephants don’t notice.
After feeding them our amateur attempt at elephant medicine making, we also got to give them baths. To do this, we actually got this soapy bark stuff to wash them with rather than using a plastic brush which can damage their skin. It’s literally just this plant bark that when you beat it up enough excretes its own soap and then the bark fiber itself acts as the brush. We all sucked at beating the bark though so our guide amused us for a bit before doing it all for us.
And then of course, BATH TIMEEEE! We walked the elephants into the river and had to aggressively fling water at them and try and scrub them with our little pieces of bark without accidentally getting trampled on. And then of course, the first thing the baby elephant did was get out of the river and roll in the dirt.
That wrapped up the elephant portion of our day, but there was still tons more to do. Next, we embarked on a 1 hour hike to a nearby waterfall (not including the 1 hour to get back).
And look who else we ran into at the waterfall.
Also featured on the hike: I found this cool rhinoceros beetle and was also the first person to master the slingshot.
After the hike we also went river rafting - which of course I have no pictures of again because I’m not cool enough to have a water proof camera. At any rate, we started off white water rafting and nearly falling out of our raft several times. There were about 3 rafts and ours of course had the CRAZIEST chaperone. We wondered if our raft leader was genuinely insane for a bit, but at any rate he was entertaining just yelling random things, laughing for no reason constantly, and splashing us.
After that we did “traditional” bamboo rafting. And failed. A lot. The bamboo raft is very long and thin, basically with everyone sitting single file on it through the shallows while a woman leads the raft down the river by a rope. We had about 18 people and the max for the raft was probably more like 10. While we all managed to fit we were literally submerged underwater to our waists and were constantly about to flip over as we leaned back and forth. We saw people on the shoreline clearly laughing at our struggle as well.
Despite the failure it was loads of fun. Would definitely recommend the elephant sanctuary route over elephant riding.
