Our Chubby Friends Armed With Water Cannons!
Dear Wilson,
Our family went to the Elephant Freedom Project in Chiang Mai. This was not a zoo or an elephant show. This is the purest form of seeing nature. It was the most anticipated event and our biggest motivation for coming to Chiang Mai. All 5 of us were super excited for this moment!
It was about a 1-hour drive north from our Airbnb into the mountain area. When we arrived we were greeted by a young man named Nut. One of the funniest individuals I have ever met. He seemed to love foreigners and loved to make us laugh. Just meeting him alone was worth the 1-hour drive. We were one of the first ones there since we personally drove our rental car. Mostly everyone else took the shuttle bus but ya know… we get car sick and stuff. So we left early, drove slowly, and stopped frequently as we went up the mountain to prevent nausea.
Anyways, we hung out with Nut until the others arrived. Only about 20 people in the entire group so it wasn't crowded and felt quite exclusive honestly. Nut and the other guide he calls "Mr. Spicy" lol, asked us to help prepare the elephant food. We chopped sugar cane sticks and separated bananas from the bunch of bananas. Once we were done with that we walked about 3 minutes away and greeted 6 elephants and got to hand feed all of them. 2 of the elephants were still young at 4 and 5 years old. I was taller than the 4-year-old baby. So cool to see! It's crazy that they just crunch up 2" diameter sugar cane sticks like pretzels, haha. If you handed a baby elephant a sugar can stick, but also had a banana, they would throw the sugar cane to the side and ask for the banana with their trunk. It's funny that they had a clear preference. If you had multiple bananas and you handed them 1, they would hold the one banana while asking for more. So they would roll multiple bananas up in their trunks before they would eat them. You could watch a baby elephant easily eat about 60 bananas in less than 5 minutes. Pretty insane! Just an endless banana pit.
After we fed them, they gave us a little break and then we trekked through the jungle area for about 10 minutes. Then we took a break and waited on the elephants to catch up. Here they came marching through the jungle to meet up with us. They were used to this routine of walking with people to their favorite river. It is a very special moment when you can walk through a Thai jungle with 6 huge elephants (well 2 of them not so huge) and amazingly friendly guides. We could take pictures with them, pet them, feed them, or even have a water fight with them. The guides could say something to an elephant when they walked through some water and they would suck up a bunch of water and spray it at whoever the guide told them to spray the water at. Our kids were definitely targets and that was really fun to watch. Just standing there, watching wild elephants in their natural habitat, and playing with our kids was a very special moment for us. We walked for about an hour or more alongside these magnificent creatures. We were so close that getting stepped on was actually a concern. They walked where they wanted and had no problems bumping you out of the way. Even the smallest baby could easily move me out of the way with no resistance.
Once we made it to the river, all of the elephants got in the water, rolled around, and sprayed everyone. The guides brought buckets as some sort of an equalizer to help us in our water fights. If there were judges, we still definitely lost. Not really fair when "team Elephant" is armed with water cannons. "Team Human" had sand castle buckets, so yeah we lost for sure. The elephants seemed to enjoy us dumping water on them though, so I guess it's not a competition. The guides just made sure we didn't get behind an elephant that was laying down. If they rolled over to get up, we would have died of very severe flattening of the entire body lol. That seemed like a solid safety rule.
Such a special moment to interact with them in a free and open setting. The guides didn't need weapons, ropes, tasers, or anything else to get the elephants to follow along. They just brought treats to keep them interested along our journey. The elephants seemed so happy, the guides were very happy and enthusiastic, and in turn, the guests like us were having so much fun. It was a win win win for all 3 groups.
After we played in the water, we took a short truck ride to see a waterfall fall and that was the end of our elephant day. No, the elephants did not get in the truck with us. This was a human-exclusive event. 😉 It was a very pretty waterfall but not near as cool as being with the elephants. We spent about 45 minutes there and then headed back to our starting point. Definitely worth the money and effort. It cost us $530 USD to go on this adventure. It was our most expensive entertainment so far and may remain the most expensive thing we do. However, it was TOTALLY worth it. I will never forget this day. Have I mentioned that I fucking love Thai people? Lol