Thailand Day 2 (Part ii)

by Cheryl on November 1, 2014 with No Comments

Day 16 of our Asia 2014 vacation / Day 2 of our Thailand trip~

Part II covers our afternoon tour at the Maetang Elephant Park in Chiang Mai!

Lots of funny moments with the elephants. I do wonder if they’re “ethically trained” though? We didn’t take part in the elephant rides or whatever because apart from the sweltering heat, we just don’t feel like it’s something we wanna do. Most of the elephants seem really intelligent however! I hope they receive lots of love and pampering when they perform well in their training.

Some of the skills demonstrated by the elephants were: performing a variety of poses, kicking a soccer ball into a goal, and painting (although 1 of the 2 elephants painting seemed to have some trouble halfway through and its trainer didn’t seem too pleased, and I felt a bit uneasy with his body language / actions towards the elephant…).

Our “dua yi” / 大姨!!

Our “dua kim” / 大婶

Showing off its mouth!

Holding each others’ tails haha. Was funny how some seemed reluctant to hold another’s tail!!

The painter and its masterpiece

Shooting some goals

Trololol

We got to feed the elephants and take photos with them before and after the show. Our aunts/uncle bought some banana and sugar canes to feed them! If you didn’t wanna purchase the food, you could just give a little bit of cash to the trainer to have your photo taken with his elephant as well.

Sheena kept getting “attacked” in the face by the elephants lolol. It didn’t happen to any of us! But it happened to her both times she went up close to the elephants for photos.

I also put together the snippets of videos we took! Eerrmmergerrrt :3

Oh and there was also a baby elephant tied to a pole under a big shade (shown in the video), which kept swaying its body and swinging its trunk from side to side. Really made us wonder what was going on! Was it being punished? Or was it just put there simply because it wasn’t scheduled in the show, but the little elephant just couldn’t stand still? Hmmm…! I just hope it wasn’t being ill-treated!!