Hello Everyone

I have just spent the most amazing last 2 weeks working in an elephant sanctuary in northern Thailand, Chiang Mai. It was so incredible to be able to get so close to the elephants and work with them on a daily basis. However the work was extremely hard.

On the first day I was trusted with a machete and with no safety advice, me and a few other people were taken to a cornfield and we spent 2 hours cutting down corn and loading it onto a truck. The heat was almost unbearable and to add to it we had to wear long sleeved tops and trousers so we didn’t get cuts from the corn, never mind the sharp machetes we were wielding around. Other chores were poo shoveling, scrubbing lots and lots of melons and pumpkins, we also had to help build fences and fix roads. One afternoon we visited a local school where we got to play with the children.

I shared a room with a girl called Claires and for the first week we stayed in a bamboo hut, which was damp and we had a gecko that would do daily poo at the end of the my bed, so we asked to move at the end of the week. We were then moved into a mud hut which was much better. We had day light coming into the room and the sheets we not damp, however we had a rat infestation, so it was a case of don’t leave any food out! We had to put up with cold showers for the 2 weeks which never got any easier! We ate the same food every lunch and dinner so I am very much looking forward to pizza tonight and a hot shower as I am back in town!!

The owner of the park is a lady called Lek, which means small in Thai, she was tiny! She came to the park whilst we were there so we got a chance to talk to her. She was such an inspirational women, she started the park by herself in the 90’s and it has got bigger, she rescues elephants from circuses, trekking parks, street begging as they are treated so badly! We got to watch some footage about how the elephants are trained which starts from a very young age and can last for about 7 years. It was disgusting how the elephants were being treated, mainly beating the elephants with sharp sticks was the trainers main way of getting the elephant to do what they wanted them to do, but the elephant would also go through a ritual called the crush which is where they were put into a tiny pen where they couldn’t move, they were tied down, and beaten severely if they did something wrong, the reason for this was to train the elephant to lift there feet etc.. and all of this was for our entertainment, so we can watch them paint, or play football, or so we can ride on there backs. Any elephant you meet that is tame has gone through this disgusting form of training! In the elephant park where is was staying they had 2 elephants that were born in the park and they were training them (not to play football) but to be able to lift there feet etc purely for medical reasons and all this was done on reward training with food, basically how you would train a dog. So they were proving elephants could be trained in a humane way! The Thai government turn a blind eye to way elephants are treated, Lek’s first mission is to ban elephant street begging, it is already illegal but the police turn a blind eye to it.

Tomorrow I fly to Bangkok to start my journey to Singapore, can’t wait! Sorry to ramble on, hope everyone back home is well! I miss you all so much!!

Much Love xxxxxxxxx
P.S Sorry this stupid blog wont let me upload pictures!!