Nerd alert: I spent 7 hours researching the most ethical elephant sanctuary I could find in Chiang Mai.
After that embarrassing amount of time surfing the internet, I came to one conclusion: The most ethical elephant sanctuary was ironically called Ethical Elepant Sanctuary.
Elephant Nature Park is one of the most well known, but from what I remember reading...
...they secretly mistreat their elephants at night after the tourists go home. =/
Kinda bummed because I took extensive notes while researching so I could post too many details on steemit...
...but they disappeared that time I had the crisis of accidentally losing a lot of info on my computer.
Oh well.
At least I can tell you about where I went.
I went here for my birthday last year.
I've kind of decided that there's no such thing as a truly ethical elephant place. If a company advertises that you can take mud baths with the elephants and they have some kind of agenda...
...then they're not relaly just letting the elephants roam free.
I saw one of the mahouks (elephant caraetakers) take something sharp and poke an elephant when he thought nobody was looking.
I know a gentle poke is ok, but based on 100s of reviews I've read about other companies... it sounds like some pokes are actually hurtful.
I probably won't do an elephant thing again because of that, but it was cool getting to touch them and be so up close to them. They don't feel anything like I imagined.
They're actually pretty hairy!
Steepshot