Southeast Asia: Day Nine - Krabi Elephant Sanctuary

In the morning we relaxed at the hotel until 10 when the Elephant Sanctuary Van picked us up from the hotel. We drove into the jungle and arrived at the sanctuary within an hour.

We got off the van and our guide told us about the sanctuary and the elephants that lived here. They have three elephants so far and are trying to help more but they are really expensive to take care of. They used to be working elephants in fields so they can't let them free as they are already tamed and wouldn't survive in the wild now. Not to mention they cost so much money to buy from elephant rides and field workers. So many of these beautiful, intelligent, and compassionate animals are mistreated at the elephant rides. They aren't supposed to be ridden and misused like that so please don't support the business.

Once the guide was done talking the elephants were led in for some lunch. The guide brought out three huge buckets of natural bananas grown on site and we got to hand feed the elephants. You would reach out your hand and hold the banana out to the elephant and they would use their trunks and grab the banana out of your hand.

The trunk would wrap around your hand and you could feel how strong their trunks were. I bet that she could have picked me up and thrown me with that strength but they are kind and gentle. We fed them banana after banana - it was incredible how much they could eat. After we ran out of bananas we made them a mix of mushed banana and seed and nut proteins that would help keep the elephants strong and healthy with a bunch of vitamins they would normally get by themselves in the wild.

We mixed it all together and shaped it into a baseball sized ball and fed it directly into there mouths because their trunks wouldn't be able to hold it. Then we walked them out to a field with a bunch of mud puddles and they sprayed mud all over themselves.

After 15 minutes of mud bathing we walked back to the pond at the front of the sanctuary. We walked into the pond and washed them off. It was nice and cool in the pond and we scrubbed the elephants clean.

We said goodbye to the elephants and they walked off back to the field. After showering and having some watermelon for lunch we made a donation to the sanctuary and said thank you to our guide.

We hopped into the van and headed back to our apartment. We had some leftover pad thai from the cooking class and swam in the pool a bit more before heading in to bed.

Total Vans: 2

Total Miles Walked: 2.5 miles