Shifting from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, located north, in the mountainous region of Thailand showed us a whole different perspective on what a Thai city can be like, surrounded by green hills, limited smog and a more laid back atmosphere.
While it is billed as “blissfully calm and laid-back”, over the last decade Chiang Mai has morphed from a quiet mountain retreat into a labyrinth of gift shops, markets, restaurants, massage parlors, and taxi stands filled with western tourists trying to not get overcharged by the ever-so-clever Thais. Combined with this evolution, the broader landscape of the region now offers a dizzying array of adventure activities where you can play for days. Overall though, Chiang Mai remains a mecca not only for adventure and animal lovers, but also those who want to learn to cook, meditate, and wonder aimlessly.
While we took time to see some of the main monuments in the area, we mainly focused on adventures outside the city. We stayed at an amazing Airbnb with a fantastic pool, with hosts who treated us like family, cooking delicious dinners and helping us arrange all of our activities, of which there were many: zip lining, swimming in waterfalls, hiking through rice patties, bamboo rafting and of course, visiting an elephant sanctuary.
The elephant sanctuary presented us with a dilemma. Elephants are amazing and beautiful creatures, but we strive to avoid animal exploitation and hoped to find a positive way to interact with elephants and support those organizations that hopefully are doing things right. Figuring out if that actually exists required us to navigate based on what we thought was “ethically appropriate”. Do the elephants have the kind of space they need? Is our money supporting the right future for the animals? Is riding ok? (Much of the research suggests that it’s fine to ride the elephants but not on their backs, only for short time, and only bare / without any baskets). Based on all that, we decided to spend the day at Patara Elephant Farm which appeared to be one of the more reputable conservation sites. Patara has 65 elephants and at least to us, it looked like they take great care of them. By just spending only a day with them I can’t say we are significantly more confident that Patara really does focus on rehabilitation and conservation (tough to really get behind the scenes), but feels like we make the right choice.
At Patara, we had a truly magical experience.
We had four elephants specifically for our group of 10 and got to spend most of the day with them. For our family, the two elephants were named Poo and Moonpat. They were both sweet animals and seemed to have fun playing with us and showing off skills (picking up bananas with their trunk, spraying us with water after the bath, etc.) We fed them, bathed them, fed them again, played a bit, and we did actually ride on their necks, as our mahout instructed us to do.
We felt fortunate to have spent time in such close proximity to these magnificent creatures and helping support an organization that looks to be doing good for these animals. Spending the day learning about their habitat, having the chance to observe them in their natural environment and being so physically engaged with them was spectacular and beautiful. A definite highlight of the trip.
Building a Flying House 