elephant attractions in chiang mai

Editor’s Note: We’ve invited our intern, Sofiya, to contribute to Save Elephant Foundation’s blog and document her experiences with some of our projects.

For most of my life elephants and monkeys have been my favorite animals. You can imagine my excitement when I found out I was selected to intern at Save Elephant Foundation here in Chiang Mai, which meant I would be traveling to Thailand where my two favorite animals happily reside.

After a couple days settling into the office I had the opportunity to volunteer at the park. There are several different ways to visit Elephant Nature Park, from day visits and overnight stays to week-long volunteer opportunities. Since I arrived later in the week I missed the general tour and information which week-long volunteers receive at the beginning of their stay. Before I could join the volunteers in their duties, I was scheduled to walk around with the day visitors and familiarize myself with the park grounds as well as catch up on what I had missed.

At 8 a.m. I got picked up at the office with a group of day visitors and we embarked on an hour long ride to the park. In the van we had the opportunity to hear details about the park and were shown a documentary centered around Asian elephants and the park itself. Our day visit guide, Sai, was incredibly knowledgable, friendly and open to every and any question we had about the park and the elephants.