Best kiss by Elephant

Yesterday I had the most amazing day! I had signed up to go to the Elephant Nature Park because I heard that when in Chiang Mai (and Thailand in general) it's the thing to do. Now I'm not exactly an elephant fanatic but I figured it would be something to check off my list, you know: been there, done that. Little did I know how awesome this experience would be! There are actually many places/companies with which you can see elephants in Chiang Mai but I happened to pick up the brochure for this one and sign up, what a great fluke! As I learned in a documentary shown to us on the way there, the park was started by a Thai woman (Lek) who rescues elephants who are out of work (elephants used to be used for logging but this is now banned) being abused (the traditional obedience training for the elephants is very brutal and inhumane, many even die during the process) not properly cared for (it's so easy to purchase an elephant that people are buying them and using them to beg in the streets but have no mahout training and don't know how to care for them) or are injured or near death, nurses them back to health and then cares for them. Beginning around 10 years ago with one elephant, she now has 36 in her amazing "elephant heaven". She also runs something called Project Jumbo where her and her team travel to different villages to teach them to properly care for their elephants and she's working with Mahouts (elephant handlers) to convince them that positive reinforcement works and is a better method to train their elephants. To afford to purchase these elephants from their owners and then continue to feed and care for them, she opened the park up for volunteering. You can either spend a day or I think anywhere up to a week looking after the elephants. And the best part is that since her mahouts use positive reinforcement to train the elephants, they are so well behaved and used to people that these massive animals roam free around the park and you can feed them, bathe them and interact with them (One of them even gives kisses with its trunk!). It's so horrible to hear the pasts these elephants came from, the sickening brutality they endured and see the injuries they still have (at least one had a broken leg, one a broken hip etc) but to see them so well cared for and happy and know my visit helped to make this happen, made me feel pretty darn good about my day :)