Thai Elephant Sanctuary - Chiang Mai

Here is some footage from our wonderful day with 7 elephants at the Thai Elephant Home sanctuary near Chiang Mai, Thailand. We were brought there by the Loolu Tour which shares the farm.

We got to feed the elephants bananas, play in the mud with them, wash them in the river, and walk around spending a lot of up close quality time. No riding using those terrible wood or steel benches went on here, but the mahoots did still have hooks.

We tried hard to find an ethical elephant sanctuary and were mostly happy with this place. We considering going to the well known Elephant Nature Park, but even though they are considered ethically the best, they often run up to 100+ tourists a day through there which sounded a bit impersonal and like going to a zoo. The owner of our hostel set this tour up for us after promising us that it was an ethically run sanctuary. On the plus side, there were only THREE of us on the whole tour, and we had the entire valley to ourselves with 7 elephants and a just few mahoots! The elephants appeared happy and well taken care of. The baby's were never separated from their mama's, and they had no signs of recent abuse such as scars, abrasions, or infections. Not sure I could fully recommend this place, but all in all it was a wonderful day with some magnificent creatures!

Back in December my wife and I quit our jobs, packed everything up, and hit the road for 5 1/2 months. We travelled to New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. This was Day 130 of our journey.

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Видео Thai Elephant Sanctuary - Chiang Mai канала The Persi Traveler