We were picked up from our hotel first thing in the morning, and discovered that our group would consist of – a young American couple from Virginia, an older American couple from Boston, a pair of Australian sisters, one of whom lived in Austria (no confusion there), and an airline pilot who had visited the sanctuary once before when she was about 14.<\/p>\n
We learned all of this in the hour or so we had in the van to get acquainted on the way to the park, where we were greeted right away.<\/p>\n
After a brief welcome, we were immediately set to work feeding watermelon and rice balls to the elephants.\u00a0 Pretty much the entire day, we were shoving food into whichever elephant was nearby.\u00a0 Elephants eat a lot, as it turns out – who knew?<\/p>\n It wasn’t always clear where we were going next, but that’s because, as was quite obvious, our route was being determined by where the\u00a0elephant<\/em> decided to go, not by puny humans.<\/p>\n After a nice morning walk, we were taken to a lovely porch overlooking the valley for a delicious vegetarian lunch.\u00a0 As we walked into the verandah, everyone in the party started coughing from the spicy aroma of cooking chilis.<\/p>\n Too be clear – all of us love spicy food and were quite used to it, but there was SO much chili smoke in the air, everyone had some amount of respiratory distress.<\/p>\n Thing is – the food wasn’t that spicy at all.\u00a0 (delicious, but not terribly spicy) I’m convinced the chefs just tossed a whole bunch of chilis on the fire just as we arrived in order to have a little laugh at our expense.<\/p>\n The view was lovely, anyway.<\/p>\n But it meant they were rushing up to elephants they recognized, and calling out their names, and acting as if they knew them, while simultaneously utterly ignoring specific instructions from the caretakers about how to behave safely around animals that way as much as a backhoe.<\/p>\n We’d have been embarrassed for them, but then we remembered we’re Canadian.<\/p>\n Speaking of the caretaker, this is her.<\/p>\n I mentioned that our new friend the pilot had visited when she was 14.\u00a0 She showed the photo to Lek, and Lek immediately insisted that they recreate it now.\u00a0 It was really touching.<\/p>\n We watched a few more elephants ford the river, and then it was time to head back to Chiang Mai.<\/p>\n We got back to Chiang Mai, and were faced with the perennial question – how to narrow down where to eat?\u00a0 Well, we’d only had crispy pork once so far this trip, so it was CLEARLY time to rectify this fact.\u00a0 We walked up to another Benny-recommended, internet famous restaurant in an industrial area north of town, Neng’s Clay Oven Roasted Pork.<\/a><\/p>\n And boy howdy was this another winner…<\/p>\n I can’t even with the food in this country.<\/p>\n After this, we walked back down to our hotel, which was now bang in the center of a huge Sunday night market in central Chiang Mai.\u00a0 We pushed our way through the crowds looking at crafts and generally enjoying the sights, sounds, smells.\u00a0 Sadly, not taking any PICTURE of the sights, sounds, or smells.<\/p>\n We did also finally manage to find a vendor selling the coconut pancakes I’d been wanting to try but hadn’t yet.<\/p>\n One of the big tourist things to do in Thailand is to go see elephants. There are any number of places you can do this, but there’s a wide range of ethicality on display.\u00a0 A good rule of thumb is … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/20251130_100902.jpg\")
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\nAfter some time getting to know the elephants in the paddock (who were there because they were recuperating from medical attention), we were driven out to the nearby hills where the elephants hang out during the day.\u00a0 We joined one particular elephant on a walk around the mountainside.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/20251130_120850.jpg\")
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\nAlso, any time we didn’t shove watermelon or bananas into her fast enough for her liking, she’d go over and start chowing down on nearby trees.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/20251130_124418.jpg\")
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\nAfter lunch, we walked back to our pickup point with our elephant friend, and then boarded the truck over to the main sanctuary building on the far side of the river, so we could meet the rest of the herd, and watch elephants fording the river to come home for the night.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/20251130_155722.jpg\")
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\nAnd this is the point in the program where we realized that the older American couple on our tour were Elephant Nature Park groupies. They had apparently watched a million videos about the park and developed the sort of parasocial relationship with the elephants and the caretaker that most people reserve for podcasters.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-11-30-15.39.30-1024x763.jpg\")
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\nHer name is Lek, and she’s apparently incredibly esteemed for her role in pioneering ethical treatment of rescue elephants.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/20251130_160824.jpg\")
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\nThe whole day was an incredible experience.\u00a0 To get to spend time around these huge animals without feeling like they were being coerced into putting on any kind of show was a real privilege. If you’re in northern Thailand, you should go.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/20251130_191649.jpg\")
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\nWorth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"