Elephants encounters at Chiang Mai - in Thailand

My friend Bernie is just back from a few months living in Chiang Mai in Thailand and brought back these elephant pictures from the Mae Tang Elephant Park that he visited while he was there. The elephant below is painting a T-shirt which will then be sold to raise money for the park.

You’ll find many different elephant parks in northern Thailand and around Chiang Mai. The elephants once worked in the forest to move logs, but since the logging trade was banned in 1988 you can see them by visiting one of these centres where they work with their mahouts to put on a performance for you.

There are around 80 elephants at this particular camp, 50 of which are owned by the camp and the rest are brought in by the mahoots who own them, whenever they cannot find work and so cannot afford to feed the elephants. At night the elephants are taken up into the forest, which is their natural habitat to rest and sleep. The camp supports 300 local people in direct employment and an estimated 1000 indirectly rely on the income from visitors.

The MaeTang Elephant Park is 45 minutes out of Chiang Mai towards Chiang Dao and the owners are in the process of setting up an elephant clinic to provide veterinary care for the elephants. At Mae Taeng they take a “soft” approach to elephant training and the mahouts who are sent to nearby Lampang to be trained to look after the elephants, some of which are fourth generation born in captivity.

There are different views as to whether it is the right way to treat the elephants to keep them in captivity and perform for tourists, but elephants have always worked in this area and by establishing the elephant clinic at Mae Taeng, they will enhance the veterinary care of the elephants. Elephants can have health problems, such as constipation, caused by eating too many banana branches and insect infestation under their skin which has to be checked for daily.

By having the clinic on the premises, they will avoid sometimes having to drive a sick animal to Lampang to see the vet, not ideal with such a huge animal and also stressful for the elephant.This elephant clinic will invite visiting vets from all over the world, who want to get experience treating elephants, to come to stay and will be equipped with a convalescing and nursery area as well as the natural and conventional medicines to treat the elephants. The clinic will also provide free veterinary care to all elephants in the MaeTang area, not just those at the park.

Elephant camps are an important part of the tourism industry in Thailand and provide local employment for those who would have formerly been employed in logging, so enjoy your encounter with these gentle giants but make sure you choose an elephant centre that has high standards of animal welfare.

This post is part of the Friday photo hosted by Delicious baby - see all the other Friday photos here.

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See more photos from the elephant camp on Flickr

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A culinary trip to Thailand

We celebrated my husband’s birthday this weekend and when I asked him what he would like to eat most in the world, his heart’s desire was for a Thai green curry.

Knowing a work colleague had visited Thailand many times, I sought her advice on the recipes and she told me about the wonderful Chiang Mai Thai cookery school where she learned to cook some delicious dishes that have only enhanced her addiction to Thai food. Her two day course included a visit to the market to buy the produce that she later cooked and explain how different foods and spices would be used. You can read an article on the cookery school from the Times Newspaper here.

I also enjoyed this blog post I found on Primitive Travel about a similar cookery course at the Three Elephants cookery school in Laos. This blog has to be the ultimate guide to travelling and eating in Thailand - the photography just makes my mouth water.

By co-incidence one of our dinner guests was just back from a visit to Chiang Mai and was thinking of settling there for a year or two. Apparently Chiang Mai is to Bankok as Bristol is to London - a sizeable city with plenty of culture and entertainment but not as overwhelming as a capital city can be - in other words a great springboard for exploring northern Thailand.

Inspired by the Chiang Mai Thai cookery book, this was the menu I cooked for my husband’s birthday meal. Here are the recipes if you fancy recreating your own Thai feast.

Green Thai chicken curry with rice

Stir fried vegetables with ginger

Papaya and peanut salad

Mango and lychee fruit salad with coconut ice cream

Chocolate brownies - well I had to get in a birthday cake somewhere!

Thanks to babasteve and skwp for their photos on flickr under creative commons. Other photo from the Chiang Mai Thai website. You can see the photos of my Thai meal here on flickr.com.

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