Patara Elephant Farm - Day Three

I must admit, one of the major reasons we went to Chiang Mai was because I watched Samantha Brown ride and swim with an elephant at Patara Elephant Farm. I'd never had any desire to ride an elephant before then, but it looked like an amazing experience. I'd also had a thing for elephants after seeing an Oprah that showed elephants having a "funeral" for their dead in which they all mourned and "touched" the fallen with their trunks. I still get teary thinking about it.

So our third day was spent entirely at Patara Elephant Farm (also check out their Facebook page). There are many places to pay to interact with elephants near Chiang Mai. Patara is the most expensive. There's a reason for that. It's the best.

The elephants at Patara are treated extremetly well; they're treated like elephants. They have lots of space to move around, plenty of friends to socialize with, the right food in the correct proportion, and they get the care and exercise they need to thrive in captivity. Many of their elephants are rescues. Patara's focus is to educate people about elephants, increase the elephant population, and release elephants back into the wild.

BoonPak

At Patara, you become an elephant owner for day and an elephant is assigned to you. I got BoonPak, which means Happy. BoonPak is a big, beautiful, 17-yr-old male with long, glorius tusks. He was rescued from the circus when he was 6. Since I was now BoonPak's owner, I fed him bananas and sugar cane and made sure he was healthy by checking the quantity and consistency of his droppings.

Then I had to clean him. First, I had to brush the dirt off of him with a bundle of leaves. There is a lot of dirt on an elephant, and the surface area is large. After the dirt was removed, I took him into the creek and scrubbed him down. Cleaning an elephant is hard work.

Then we road them bareback down a trail to another small river. I thought it might be scary, but they're so slow and sturdy, no worries.

When we got to the river, there was an amazing spread of food. It was all so good, and great sticky rice desserts were wrapped in the banana leaves. I don't think we ate half of it. So the elephants got to finish it. Except for the chicken.

The most special part of the trek was that you could swim with the elephants if you wanted to. It wasn't hot on the day we went, so most people didn't want to do it, since the water was quite cold. But, hey, when are you ever going to swim with an elephant? Plus, they only picked two elephants to interact with in the creek, and one was BoonPak, so that sealed the deal.

Again, I thought I might be scared, you know, since he's huge, and water isn't my best surface. But BoonPak loved the water and he was so relaxed. I ended up relaxing with him, resting my body on his front leg and laying my head on his. Whenever he'd move his leg, I'd move right along with him. It was pretty awesome. I couldn't stop smiling.

BoonPak and his awesome handler, Thep, who assisted me in taking care of BoonPak all day.

I'm going to be honest, my legs inner thighs took about a month to return to normal. But Patara was an amazing experience. When you're there, you feel like you're doing something good for the world. And you're definitely doing something good for yourself.