Visiting Chiang Rai: Pranks of Giants

“When one sees an elephant, a person can understand how something can be both totally alien while also vividly belonging in our shared world” -Old Sean

To Thai Highland

Following a late and very fattening night in Chiang Mai, I’ve wandered a bit further north, visiting Chiang Rai.

Because my roommate Kat and I were trying to make it swiftly into Myanmar (Burma), we didn’t linger for very long at our previous destination of Chiang Mai.

Instead of rest, we chose speed, rapidly taking a bus visiting Chiang Rai. We arrived in the city in the evening as cool breezes started beating back the tropical heat of the day. Here, we attended another Night Market. 

An Evening in Chiang Rai

The Chiang Rai Night Market is smaller than others I’ve been to. It’s also a bit more geared towards tourists. There are many more souvenir items and the food is better for stories than nutrition.

True to form, Kat and I tried a lot of novelty food. Admittedly, the selection felt less universally appetizing.  (Yum, spiced, pan-fried crickets.  I now know I’m not a fan of silkworms though.  Too waxy). 

After the Night Market, Kat and I spent one last set of hours checking out the central city area. It’s a very small city, so the plazas are tiny and most of the area can be accessed within an hour of walking on foot. We saw the gratuitously decorated sparkling clock tower in the city square (known as the Clock Tower of Chiang Rai) and coordinated our plans for the upcoming days.

An Intro to Thai Elephants

Specifically, Kat and I signed up to learn and help out at an overnight elephant sanctuary known as Elephant Valley.

So, in an ironic twist, Thailand has one of the largest populations of elephants in the world due to the tourist industry willing to provide an economic incentive to ride, swim alongside and feed elephants. 

While there are several groups out there who don’t treat the elephants badly, this hardly constitutes a normal existence for elephants.  There are serious ethical concerns with these paid-for experiences.

The constant human interactions with elephants and the influx of stress caused by strangers constantly swarming a wild animal is too much.  Sickness, overwork, poor living conditions and exploitation are hallmarks of the elephant tourism industry of Southeast Asia.  

Elephant Valley Ethical Volunteering

Elephant Valley is a bit different.  Based in Cambodia, this program retrieves elephant candidates from various jobs (performances, elephant ride, construction work, smuggling programs) and puts them through an educational sanctuary. 

This learning methodology has a more experienced elephant teach the new arrivals how to behave according to life in the wild.  The elephants are taught in female pairs, with a somewhat older elephant demonstrating a lot of the knowledge for their younger, incoming partner. 

For example, elephants are taught ranging and foraging habits, communication skills and socialization, how to wallow in water, dusting themselves for sun protection and other such elephant things.  

Elephant Valley does a splendid job of this with their “elementary level” program based in Chiang Rai.  The enclosure is large enough for the elephants to range and learn, but not so large that they’re bereft of human oversight in case of a struggle or emergency.   The program is designed to allow experienced elephants to graduate to the bigger range without any human interactions in Cambodia.

Volunteering with Bohemoths

As a traveler visiting Chiang Rai and the elephant habits (or more accurately, visiting as a paying volunteer) the elephant interactions are extremely limited. 

When operating inside the enclosure (planting grass, cleaning up droppings, repairing fences and roads, etc.) absolutely zero interactions with the elephants are allowed.  The elephants at this “elementary” level are still allowed to be fed once per day by visitors at a specified time and location.

However, if the elephants got too close to a person while inside an enclosure, we had to lightly jog away to maintain distance. 

Meet Molly: My Favorite Elephant

The youngest elephant of this student-herd, was a female named Molly. When volunteers jogged away, she found this delightfully amusing. Molly seemed to enjoy sneaking up on our work crew and make small, startling noises. We were often taken unaware and needed bounce away.  After causing us to flee, Molly would chuff happily at our evasion, doing tiny walking loops while wiggling her ears.  

At another point during our visit, a dog bounded through the enclosure. 

The local dog at the volunteer enclosure is a free-range, sharp-eared mainstay with a girlfriend dog on the opposite field. Unfortunately, this dog is super unwelcome when it comes to the elephants.

The poor canine was trotting across the enclosure when he stumbled close to Molly, surprising her. She created an enormous ruckus, calling the rest of the females in the herd over.

The entire herd formed up, crashing, bellowing, rumbling and stomping around the poor canine until he successfully escaped, sprinting back behind the fence barrier. When the sanctuary manager found him, he was trembling for the rest of the evening.  Of course, the next day, he simply jogged out again to see his girlfriend.

I give that dog points for either bravery, recovery or an incredibly dismissive short-term memory. I’d never heard a sound like a defensive elephant herd before.

Nobody sane should ever have to face down an elephant shield-wall.  

Learning About Elephants

Excitement aside, the staff is extremely informative: Here’s what I now know:

Elephant Stealth Steps

Elephants are astonishingly stealthy, since they walk on their toes, the rest of their feet being a large, fatty cushion which muffles sound and helps them feel vibrations.  The infrasound elephants use to communicate is felt in these cushions, which are used to converse over vast distances.  

When an elephant steps on a tree branch and it breaks underfoot, the fatty cushions in their feet muffle the sound. This is why they seem so quite, despite being so large.

Elephants are also surprisingly hard to spot. Their shapes, long limbs, motions and coloration makes them blend suprisingly well in wooded areas.

Elephant Trunks

An elephant’s trunk contains more muscles than a human body.  They’re also capable of a wide range of motion and operate as a sort of muscle multitool.  They’re capable of inhaling and storing water (though an elephant cannot drink through a trunk). 

Elephant trunks are used to pick up items through two primary methods.  The first involves using suction to hold an object in place, useful for small objects such as nuts.  The second and more common method for larger objects involves using the nostril “lip” or “fingers” at the tip of a trunk to grip and move items.  

Elephants are almost always in motion, swaying, flapping ears, twisting trunks, playing with grass and sweeping their tails. Complete stillness is usually a sign of intense concentration or distress.  A coiled, tense tail is also an indicator of stress.

Elephants and Others

Elephants will chase dogs.  Dogs will not hold their ground. Dogs are wise.

Elephants can communicate over vast distances using extremely low, carrying sounds.  These sounds are thought to travel through the ground, rather than the air.  Elephants many miles apart from one another are capable of coordinating motion through this method.

Elephants will douse themselves and each other in grass and dust in order to prevent sunburn.

Volunteering with Elephants

At the sanctuary, I enjoyed manual labor, such as planting grass for later consumption and picking up notably fibrous elephant poop. When outside the enclosure, I helped with chopping up banana trees with a machete. These tree trunks were cut into “plates” which were offered as snacks. Despite the tree trunks being cut up, some of them were a bit too big for the elephants to easily eat. When the elephant Molly got a piece which was too big, she would step on the trunk-piece and then snuffle up the shards.

The entire experience was amazing. I also got the chance acquaint myself with the sheer amount of mucus a hungry elephant trunk can produce.

Back to Towns

After our volunteer work at Elephant Valley, Kat and I returned to Chiang Rai. We had a shuttle leaving that afternoon, heading towards the border town of Tachiliek.

Since we had a bit of extra time to spend, we wandered to Wat Rung Khun, the famous artistic White Temple.

The White Temple an impressive series of buildings intricately decorated in modern swirls, statues, layers and glinting silver embellishments. A visitor could gaze at specific segments for hours and always find something new.  The temple is part of a revitalization art project and gains quite a few tourists. There are sections of the temples which show swirling cloud warriors, a sea of grasping hands, a reflective lake, trails of pale temple halls and a surprising number of additional decorated buildings.

Finally, our time visiting Chiang Rai was spent. Kat and I launched into our poorly planned foray into Myanmar, relying on an odd tumble of luck. 

Going forward, I’ll be navigating the confusing land border between Thailand and Myanmar by crossing into the improbable town of Tachiliek.

Until then,

Best regards and excellent trails,

Old Sean

Written February 15th 2018

Read a full list of recommended places while visiting Chiang Rai by clicking here

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