Historically, elephants in Thailand are considered to be very important culturally. There are many elephant’s references to art works, literature and national emblems. Thailand’s official flag was a white elephant in the middle of the scarlet background.
First stop, the “poo paper factory”. Yes you heard it right. That’s “poo” as in elephant waste. Ironically, we now know first hand that there’s not really a smell. Baskets of poo...
In our hands on experience, we took poo and put it in a bath of water. This breaks it down and helps separate the heavier particles like sand and dirt, from the lighter grasses.
After the slushy material it taken off of the tip of the bath, it’s put into a machine that slowly makes it into smoothie consistency.
The smoothie consistency material is then out on a screen in a frame in a quite thin layer then the screen is laid out to dry for bout a day.
Once the material is dry on the screen, it is then Peeled off of the screen and... walh! It’s paper!
We then took star shapes, elephant shapes and heart shapes to glue into bookmarks made from the poo paper. Artsy craftsy with elephant poo😜
We saw beads that were made from poo paper
In the end, let’s face it... it’s also fun to say “poo paper” 😜
Now, we’re off to take care of the elephants.
Baanchang Elephant Park is dedicated to providing elephants with the highest quality-of-life possible. All funds for running the park are from visitors : meaning all funds go towards making their elephants lives as pleasant as possible and taking care of retiring elephants and rescuing new elephants.
We had an incredible hands-on experience, participating in taking care of the elephants.
Quite gentle animals...
One of the trainers With his elephant
Our tour guide, Dang, who was quite knowledgeable about the elephants.
They love sugar kane
We’re having a blast!
After feeding and hanging out with the elephants. It was bath time.
Yup... We got pretty wet too
We ended the day with a group photo then headed back to the hotel to get necessarily cleaned up. 😄
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