An Experience Dreams are Made of
Our family loves animal interactions and visiting an elephant sanctuary was at the top of our animal interaction list. It was important for us to visit an ethical sanctuary where the elephants are not being ridden, worked or treated poorly. Through researching different sanctuaries, we came across a place called Krabi Elephant Sanctuary (https://krabielephantsanctuary.com.) This place is a retirement home for elephants that have been rescued from animal tourism and the logging industry. The sanctuary not only provides a safe haven for the elephants, but it provides employment to the people that work there. They use tourism dollars to feed and care for the elephants while trying to raise additional funds to rescue more of these beautiful animals. We were told that it costs approximately $35,000 US to rescue a single elephant.
What to expect
It is a small group experience (maximum of 20 people) where you participate in feeding, bathing and interacting with the elephants. To kick off the experience, you get a quick education about Asian elephants and their natural behaviors. It is an experience you’ll never forget! At this sanctuary, they had three beautiful elephants at the time of our visit, each with their own unique personality. You can tell by looking at them that they are extremely smart and aware. It makes you want to do more to help rescue others. The sanctuary is about a 50-minute drive from Ao Nang. You get picked up and dropped off so there is no need to hire a driver or rent a car. The total experience is about 4-5 hours including pickup and drop-off. They have fresh fruit, bottled water and hot showers to clean up after the experience. The cost is approximately $105 Cdn (2500 baht) per adult and $84 (2000 baht) per child. Not cheap but worth every penny!
The experience – Amazing!
When you arrive, the caregivers introduce you to the elephants and give you several buckets of bananas to feed them. You also get to hand-make protein balls which get fed to the elephants. Our son loved this part and took it very seriously. The elephants are very gentle in accepting food and there are a couple of ways to feed them: 1) Holding it out for them to take the food with their trunks or 2) Putting the food directly in their mouth which is a bit intimidating but so cool! Once the elephants are fed, you walk with them to a natural mud pond where you get down and dirty with them in the mud. You can even rub mud on their bodies. Expect to be sprayed as I really think they enjoy spraying people! The mud bath though is totally optional and you can just observe if you like. After the mud bath, you walk to a pond where you and the elephants clean off the mud. You are given buckets to rinse off the mud and you get very wet. I have never seen our kids so happy…so different than the experiences they have back in Canada. We were smiling ear to ear after this day.
Our Review
This experience was very well organized and the caregivers were great! It was my daughter’s 8th birthday and I told them this when I made my booking so they surprised her with several mini birthday cakes and sang happy birthday to her. This absolutely made her day and was totally unexpected! This was one of the best experiences of our lives and we can’t stop talking about it.
Check out our YouTube video of our experience here:
What to bring
You are in the hot and muddy jungle of Thailand so don’t forget to bring the following:
Hat / Towel / Bathing Suit / Comfortable shoes that you don’t mind getting completely muddy / Sunscreen/Change of Clothes / Bug Spray / and of course your Camera.
