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Volunteering at Elephant Nature Park: Day Two – A Crappy Morning :)
Tuesday, our first full day at the park began at around 4am with a chorus of barking dogs. We tried our best to get back to sleep, but inevitably, something would rile the dogs each hour. We were both...
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Volunteering at Elephant Nature Park: Day One – Introduction
At the Elephant Nature Park, about one hour north of Chiang Mai, longer-term volunteers begin each Monday. We were picked up at 8:15am by a van from our condo and after a brief stop at the office to...
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Spending Time With Our Elephant Friends
We have befriended several of our fellow volunteers at the Elephant Nature Park and have been fortunate enough to spend more time with them while they are still in Chiang Mai. The group started out...
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Ligeia’s Visit to Elephant Nature Park
Since Ligeia was only 2 kilometers away from the Elephant Nature Park where she and Mindy did the week of volunteer service, Ligeia decided to spend Friday afternoon and evening visiting the...
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Baby Elephant at the Elephant Nature Park
We went to Elephant Nature Park again for the day as we do every second Saturday. This time was an extra special visit though as we learned on the ride up about a baby elephant that had just arrived...
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Raja Gaja’s Funeral
We arrived at Elephant Nature Park on Sunday morning and were shocked to hear the news the little baby elephant, Raja Gaja, had passed away the night before. Despite round-the-clock care, attention and...
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Welcome to the World Navann – A Visit to Elephant Nature Park
One night at the Elephant Nature Park (saveelephant.org) there was quite the commotion with trumpeting and trunk slapping. It wasn’t until the morning though that they realized why: a little baby boy...
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Surin Elephant Roundup: Behind the Scenes
Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Surin Elephant Roundup, a government-sanctioned festival celebrating Thailand’s revered Asian elephant. The multi-day event draws large crowds all eager to...
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Dao Tong: An Elephant Rescue Story
As you may know, since we volunteered at Elephant Nature Park in May 2012, the foundation that runs it (Save Elephant Foundation), its people and especially the animals it cares for have become very...
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Lucky’s Story: Rescuing an Elephant in Thailand
It was late January when rumors started swirling that Save Elephant Foundation was getting ready to rescue another elephant. A few months earlier, during my trip to Surin province to witness Dao Tong’s...
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An Elephant Walk in Northern Cambodia
We spent a week within the Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary, midway between the Thai border to the north and Siem Reap to the south. We helped out at Save Elephant Foundation‘s project in the Sanctuary by...
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Celebrating My Birthday at Elephant Nature Park
With Dani in the Tree Shrine Maybe it has something to do with getting older, but for the past few years, I have had less of a desire for birthday things and rather look forward to having fantastic...
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Elephant Kraal in Ayuthaya
On my last morning I took a final look at the map of Ayuthaya that the guesthouse gave me when I noticed a small cartoon-drawn elephant with the label “Elephant Kraal” in the top right corner of the...
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A Buddhist Funeral for Mae Tee
Sticks of incense stand upright in the freshly up-turned dirt, filling the air with their fragrant smoke. Like runway lights, they lead the way from where I stand to Mae Tee, finally at rest. Blessed...
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Tilly and Mae Kham Puan – A Lesbian Elephant Couple
Elephants are matriarchal by nature, forming strong, tight-knit all-female herds, kicking out males when they become of age. In the wild, female elephants only consort with males for reproductive...
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Saying Goodbye to the Elephants
The van takes the familiar curves and we know exactly when to turn our heads to the left for the next beautiful view. “This is our last time”, we look at each other with tears in our eyes, “Let’s make...
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Turning Poo Into Paper
While in the village of Ta Klang in Thailand’s Surin Province, I came across a paper-making factory that taught me how to turn elephant poo into paper. Unfortunately, the poo is collected from captive...
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Daily Responsibilities and Activities at the Surin Project
I was very happy to spend one of my last weeks in Thailand at the Surin Project, which helps improve the lives of captive elephants. After volunteering for a week at Elephant Nature Park in the north...
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The Surin Project – Helping Elephants by Improving the Lives of People
I was very excited to join Save Elephant Foundation‘s Surin Project, wanting to spend time with elephants again. I soon discovered, however, that this was a different sort of elephant project, one that...
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Year in Review: 2014
What a year! 2014 was a year of amazing travel including to three new countries and major changes such as relocating across the world as we begin the next chapter of our lives. Let’s look back at this...
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