After an amazing few days in Chiang Mai, we ventured to Phuket in the southern part of Thailand. Phuket is known as a popular tourist destination due to its beautiful beaches. After my time at the Elephant Nature Park (ENP) in Chiang Mai, I didn’t know if there was much more to learn. They had done such an amazing job at educating us that I truly felt like I had learned from the best of the best. That being said, on our first morning in Phuket, we headed off to the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary (EJS) https://elephantjunglesanctuary.com/phuket/ for a morning tour. We arrived at the sanctuary around 8am and were immediately greeted by a host who explained all of the activities that we would be taking part in throughout the morning. The first activity was feeding the elephants. Big bags of bananas and watermelon were ready for the taking. After feeding, we were shown how to make paper from elephant excrement (kind of gross, but super cool). They even let me bring back an envelope for each of my students this year :).
Following our arts and crafts experiment, it was time to get our swimsuits on to bathe the elephants. I recently learned that bathing with elephants can cause them a lot of stress since being around humans while trying to bathe is obviously not natural for them. Due to the stress, ENP has cut all bathing sessions from their visits in an attempt to move toward a more natural environment for their elephants. Hopefully, the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary will eventually move toward this practice as well.
Overall, I enjoyed my time at the sanctuary but after comparing three different locations in various parts of Thailand, the Wildlife Friends Foundation and ENP seemed to be making a prominent effort to limit human interaction with the animals to provide them with a more natural state of existence. While the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary in Phuket was well on its way to providing an ethical experience for its visitors, it still has a ways to go. Due to it being a relatively new company, they are still trying to grow their popularity, and for this reason, it felt very visitor-centered rather than animal-centered. Its attempts to be an ethical alternative to the many riding camps that still exist are admirable, but I believe that emulating the models of ethical animal interaction that WFFT and ENP have sustained would be valuable for EJS moving forward.
Travels in Thailand 