Wednesday, November 25th, 2009...10:32 pm
Elephant Training in Chiang Mai, Thailand
There are at least two ways to ride an elephant in Thailand. One is to do a trek. They put you up on a mini bench and two can ride seated side by side. That is what I planned to do when I came to Thailand. Then we discovered the elephant training option.
At elephant training we learned and practiced two ways to climb up on an elephant. The first way is by the side. You grab the ear, place your foot on the elephant’s leg and then yell a command to have the elephant raise his leg up. From there, you straddle the animal and pull yourself up.
The second method is the head first method. You tell the elephant to bend his head down and then you climb onto his head. Once on, the elephant lifts his head and you move to the top. Once situated, you spin around and you are ready to ride.
Once on the elephant we learned commands to get the elephant to move right, left, forward and backward. The commands were all in Thai. When you combine the command with a tap from a mini cane, the elephant responds. So cool!
Later in the day, we took the elephant into a river and cleaned them using water and scrub brushes. We also rode them into a field to graze and even took them into a mud bath.
Our elephant group was two female elphants and a baby elephant named James Bond. He was a handful and liked to do ram us occasionally.
If you go to Chiang Mai, you MUST do the elephant training. It has been the highlight of my trip so far. More photos and video will be coming in a future post.
Tags: asia, chiang mai, elephant, thailand, training
8 Comments
November 27th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
James Bond is pretty cute but no way I’ll be doing any elephant training if I visit Thailand …. something to do with trying to train another living thing that could squash me like a bug
November 27th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
I was more nervous when the baby lion charged me than the baby elephant.
November 28th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
[...] riding elephants and playing with big cats, the other cool thing I did in Chiang Mai was take an all day Thai [...]
December 11th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
[...] the event you find yourself on an elephant in Thailand and you are being chased by tuk tuk drivers and guys trying to sell you suits or fake [...]
December 21st, 2009 at 5:02 pm
[...] is a video clip of the elephant we saw in Ko Samui, Thailand. This is not the elephant I rode in Chiang [...]
December 29th, 2009 at 8:49 am
[...] long awaited video and photos to my day of elephant training are finally ready. Enjoy my gracefulness! This highlight video was made using Windows Live [...]
January 10th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
[...] a post. I posted about the cool things I did in Chiang Mai, such as the Thai cooking class, elephant training and playing with tigers, but I didn’t mention the town itself. Chiang Mai was just my [...]
January 13th, 2010 at 9:25 am
[...] Elephant Training in Chiang Mai, Thailand [...]
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