The second day in Chiang Mai, Map woke up early to catch an elephant show at Maesa Elephant Camp at 9:40am. When Map arrived, elephants were taking a bath in the river before the show.
Elephants just finished taking a bath
Elephants walking up from the river to the stage area
After the elephant bath, the audience filed into the seats waiting for the show to start.
Audience filling the seats
Map and daddy at our seats
There were around 70 elephants at Maesa Elephant Camp. But the show elephants were relatively young ones - around 10 years old or younger. Elephant's life span was the same as human being's - around 70-80 years. Each elephant had its own mahout - each mahout was responsible for that one particular elephant. Hence, the elephant and its mahout were very close.
Watching the show
The show elephants can do many things like
- Let mahouts up and down
Elephants letting mahouts going down
- Play dead (lie still)
Elephants playing dead
- Put hats on mahouts' heads
- Play harmonica with their trunks
- Dancing
- Play soccer (football)
- Play basketball
An elephant playing basketball
- Throw darts to pop the balloons
- Show how logging is done
- Painting - this is Map's favorite
- Give a massage to mahouts
An elephant giving a massage to a mahout
For painting, it was amazing how these elephants could paint. They were trained by a professional artist for just 3-5 months. Mommy said that no way she could paint like this.
Painting flowers
Painting landscape
After all elephants finished, their paintings were auctioned off to the audience for 2000-3000 baht (70-100 US$). Awesome!
Can you believe an elephant painted this?
All paintings here were painted by elephants
Map and a French boy playing with each other during the show
After the show, all elephants lined up at the edge of the stage area, so that interested audience could feed them. Map and mommy got sugarcane and banana from the vendor - each set is 40 baht (only 1.30 US$) to feed elephants
Map and mommy feeding elephants after the show
After that, we took pictures with elephants. One elephant tried to put a hat on mommy's head and Map got upset by that.
Daddy, mommy and Map wanted to go for elephant ride, but it was so popular that all rides were sold out until 2:30pm - the last ride for the day. So we went to see Long-Neck Hill Tribe and had lunch before came back for the ride.
The elephant who gave us a ride was Ruam-Dao (her name means all-star). Map was asleep on daddy's shoulder for the first half of the ride and only woke up for the second half. Ruam-Dao was 20-years old and had 2 children. She had been with this particular mahout for the last 7 years. The mahout told us how Ruam-Dao ate around 300kg per day. She ate banana, sugarcane, grass, leaves etc. And at night Ruam-Dao slept by herself in the forest. Elephants wouldn't sleep together because they ate a lot in the night. And if they slept together, they would fight each other for the grass. And elephants wouldn't sleep with mahouts either because elephants were afraid of mahouts. If they were with mahouts, they would not sleep all night due to their fear of mahouts (mommy thought that elephants would not sleep because they wanted to play with the mahouts.)
Riding on the back of Ruam-Dao, the elephant
Ruam-Dao took shower twice a day - in the morning before she started working and in the afternoon after she finished working. There was an area in the elephant camp for elephants to take shower - mahouts use a pipe to spray water all over elephants. Rum-Dao had never been on the show. She had always been working elephants. Working elephants were normally around 20 years old and they worked until 60 years old (wow... just like human).
Riding on elephant was a lot of fun. But on the way downhill, it was quite difficult to balance oneself. Fortunately there was a metal bar that was screwed tightly to the seat, Daddy did a great job carrying Map on his back. Mommy could not even carrying a bottle of milk - she nearly lost the grip when Ruam-Dao walked downhill.
Towards the end of the 30-minute ride, Map bought 6 sets of sugarcane and banana for Ruam-Dao. She had a reputation in the elephant camp to be the most fierce towards other elephants when she had food with her. We got to see that.
Bye bye Ruam-Dao
Ruam-Dao going back home after the whole day of working
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