If you are travelling to Phuket, Thailand, and want to see elephants roaming around freely in their natural environment, head to one of the island’s elephant sanctuaries. One can spend a morning or an afternoon walking amongst these majestic giants, learning about their important link to Thai culture.
The best places to see elephants in Phuket are the Phuket Elephant Sanctuary, near Paklok, the Elephant Retirement Park, near Bangtao Beach, the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary, near Naithon Beach, and the Phang Nga Elephant Park. Do not support places that offer elephant rides or shows.
Many places in Thailand have elephants, but not all of the places offering tourists elephant experiences are ethical to visit. When booking your elephant encounter, make sure you support a place that puts the welfare of these beautiful animals first. It is magical spending time with elephants in a quiet, peaceful environment.
Elephants in Phuket
The Asian elephant is indigenous to Thailand. A century ago, when Thailand was still called the Kingdom of Siam, there were around 100 000 elephants. Elephants were domesticated and used for work and for war. They played a key role in Thai society.
Today, Thailand has about 3800 domesticated elephants and about 3000 wild elephants. Phuket is home to 235 of these elephants – the exact number is known because the large pachyderms all need to be registered on a government database.
Visit an Elephant Sanctuary or Retirement Park
One will see elephants everywhere you go in Thailand. They are, after all, the national symbol of the country. Elephants have played an essential role in Thai culture and society for hundreds of years.
When visiting Phuket, one should definitely plan to experience an encounter with these majestic beasts because it is fascinating to learn about the mahouts’ – traditional elephant keepers – deep relationships with their elephants.
Unfortunately, the popularity of elephant tourism has led to animal rights issues, so one needs to be very selective about which places you go to spend time with elephants.
It is best to visit elephant sanctuaries or retirement parks, where riding and shows are not offered, and the animals’ welfare is the top priority. These places strive to educate people from around the world about ethical elephant tourism, elephant poaching and the plight of elephants in the logging and trekking industries.
What to Do at an Elephant Sanctuary
All the elephant sanctuaries and retirement parks in this article offer either half-day or whole-day tours. Visitors can choose to spend either a morning or afternoon with the elephants.
There are many different, interesting activities to do at elephant sanctuaries:
- Observe elephants and their fascinating behaviors while they play together, feed on vegetation, bathe in the mud, or go for a swim.
- Go on jungle walks alongside the elephants.
- See how mahouts prepare the elephants’ daily feed.
- Help feed the elephants and give them their dietary supplements.
- Observe the mahouts perform health checks on the elephants.
- Volunteer to help the sanctuary by planting banana trees for the elephants to eat.
- Pose for photos alongside the elephants (strictly no flash photography).
Some but not all places allow visitors to bathe the elephants with mud and swim with the elephants.
Sanctuaries and parks offer the following educational activities:
- Video presentations teach visitors about the history of elephants in Thailand.
- English-speaking mahouts and park guides talk to visitors about the plight of Asian elephants and one can learn individual rescued elephants’ stories.
- Guides and mahouts also teach guests about the key role that elephants play in natural ecosystems and the importance of elephant conservation.
If you get hungry after all the activities, all the sanctuaries and parks offer guests a buffet-style lunch consisting of traditional home-cooked Thai foods, snacks, and refreshments (coffee, teas, water, soft drinks).
Things to Bring to an Elephant Sanctuary
Remember to take the following items with you when you visit the elephants:
- A hat and sunscreen. You will be spending a lot of time in the sun, so come prepared with protection.
- Insect repellent. There are loads of mosquitos in the jungle.
- Comfortable walking shoes. Wear shoes that are good for walking around on uneven terrain. They might get muddy, so avoid wearing your white sneakers!
- Bathing suit and towel. Depending on where you visit, you may have the opportunity to bathe the elephants or swim with them.
- Change of clothes. You will get really messy if you join the elephants for a mud bath, so it is best to pack a second outfit.
- Camera. Elephant sanctuaries and parks have photographers available to get the perfect shot of you and the elephants, but it is always nice to bring your own camera so that you do not miss out on any photo opportunities. Do not use your flash!
The Four Best Places to See Elephants in Phuket
The following places provide wonderful experiences with elephants and are 100% committed to ethical elephant tourism practices:
- The Phuket Elephant Sanctuary, near Paklok.
- The Elephant Retirement Park, near Bangtao Beach.
- The Elephant Jungle Sanctuary, near Naithon Beach.
- Phang Nga Elephant Park in the small, rural village of Phang Nga.
The Phuket Elephant Sanctuary
Dedicated to the ethical treatment of elephants, Phuket Elephant Sanctuary is a fantastic place to see elephants that are at peace in their environment. Tourists can watch the animals from a safe distance, playing, bathing, and relaxing in the forest.
This sanctuary strictly prohibits touching the elephants, flash photography, and does not offer elephant rides or shows. The welfare of the animals is of the utmost importance, and guests to the sanctuary need to respect the animals.
The Phuket Elephant Sanctuary’s residents have all been rescued from abusive lives in the elephant trekking, logging, or circus industries. The sanctuary’s operators genuinely care about creating a tranquil habitat for the retired elephants to live out their days in dignity.
One can spend either a morning or an afternoon exploring the 30-acre sanctuary. Admission fees are $45 for children under 12 and $91 for adults. This includes 3.5 hours of exploring the sanctuary, observing the elephants, walking alongside them, feeding them fruits, and enjoying some refreshments and snacks at the Tree Top reception area.
The sanctuary also offers whole-day tours, private tours, and they run a volunteer program for tourists who want to spend a lot more time with the elephants and actively contribute towards their conservation.
The Elephant Retirement Park
This Park offers tourists the opportunity of seeing and spending time with their rescued elephants in a wonderful, natural environment where the animals’ welfare is the top priority.
The Park is home to eight elephants that were all rescued from lives in working captivity. They can now live out the remainder of their lives in peace and dignity at the Elephant Retirement Park, where they will never experience abuse or riding again.
Visitors can roam around the park with the elephants for either a whole day or for half a day, watching them graze on the lush jungle vegetation, and go for a swim in their spacious pond. Tourists can also experience feeding the elephants their favorite treats.
The admission fees for a half-day tour are $55 for children under 10 and $79 for adults. This includes 3.5 hours of time with the elephants, lunch, snacks, and refreshments, access to knowledgeable, English-speaking guides, transfer to and from your accommodation and a free Elephant Retirement Park T-shirt.
One can opt for longer tours. There is a day-long program, an overnight program, and even a weekend-long elephant volunteering experience where one can be fully immersed in the elephants’ world.
The Elephant Jungle Sanctuary
Started in 2014, Elephant Jungle Sanctuary is an eco-tourism project that is dedicated to ethical elephant tourism in Thailand. They use their platform to educate tourists and local people about the Asian elephant’s plight.
The sanctuary is located in a beautiful part of the island, with jungle and beach views. They use all the money made from visitors and donations to rescue more elephants, care for them, and provide them with a safe environment in which to spend their lives.
Visitors to the sanctuary will be guided by mahouts, who speak English, and can tell one about how the elephants are cared for, elephants’ role in Thai culture, and the histories of individual animals.
Half-day tours are $58 for children under 10 and $76 for adults. These prices include pick up and drop off at your hotel or accommodation, a buffet meal and refreshments, and fruits to feed the elephants.
There are also overnight packages, and a day-long tour where one can hike through the jungle with the elephants while they forage.
On the tour, one can watch the elephants go about their daily business, feed them, bathe them, and even go swimming with the elephants! There us a professional photographer who can snap pictures of you while you fully immerse yourself in the experience.
Phang Nga Elephant Park
Phang Nga Elephant Park is about an hour’s drive outside Phuket. This relatively small, family-operated elephant park is located in the tiny rural village of Phang Nga where people have been living alongside elephants for 150 years. Here, thirty mahouts live with their elephants and their families, caring for them and promoting elephant welfare.
Phang Nga Elephant Park supports ethical elephant tourism. Their animals live in a relaxed, quiet environment and visitors are invited to experience the elephants in a respectful way. They use their education center to teach tourists and locals about the importance of elephant conservation.
Admission fees are $88 for children under 14 and $149 for adults for a 4 to 5-hour tour of the park. A traditional Thai lunch, and transfers to and from your accommodation are included in this price. Shorter 2-hour tours are also available. There are no overnight stays offered.
Visitors get the whole elephant care experience, including preparing their food, and learning about traditional Thai herbal medicine used to keep the elephants healthy.
One can walk alongside the animals through the jungle, feed the elephants, swim with them in a rock pool, and help them by planting trees and other food crops for the elephant.
The Importance of Ethical Elephant Tourism
It extremely expensive to keep elephants in captivity. Due to their large size, they require a lot of vegetation to graze on. They cost about $40 per day to feed – that is more than 3 times the minimum wage in Thailand. Elephants also need veterinary care and space to live.
In the past, the only way that mahouts could afford to keep their elephants was to send them to work in the logging or trekking industry, or to take them to urban areas to perform and beg for money.
As the tourism industry in Thailand boomed, so did the popularity of elephant tourism. People from all over the world wanted to go to Thailand to experience these giant animals face-to-face and ride on their backs.
Mahouts offered tourists elephant rides, jungle treks, and circus-like shows where elephants would be dressed up and made to perform tricks. While this work covered the cost of feeding the elephants, it also involved cruel training practices to ensure that elephants are safe around tourists.
In recent years, these animal rights abuses have been highlighted in the media and tourists now shy away from elephant tourism in Thailand, which is deemed unethical and undignified for the animals.
While increased awareness regarding the cruel treatment of elephants is positive for the species, the loss of income from tourism has meant that many mahouts are forced to send their elephants back into the logging and trekking industries. The additional impact that the Covid-19 pandemic had on the Thai tourism industry is causing widespread joblessness for many domesticated elephants.
Elephant sanctuaries and retirement parks, that rescue elephants from a hard life of working captivity rely on the income from tourists to care for their residents and to rescue more elephants. By visiting these places, paying to spend time with the animals, and even donating money, one can support elephant welfare and conservation in Thailand.
Elephants in Captivity
It is cruel for any wild animal to be forced to live in captivity, but especially for highly intelligent and emotional mammals, like elephants. However, due to widespread deforestation and destruction of the jungle – the elephants’ natural habitat – there is nowhere to release the animals back into the wild.
It is illegal to capture wild elephants for domestication and illegal to release domesticated elephants into the jungle where they will compete with wild populations. However, wild baby elephants are still routinely poached in the jungles of Myanmar and smuggled over the border into Thailand to be sold into captivity.
Elephant sanctuaries and retirement parks are the kindest, most natural places for domesticated elephants to live in Thailand. They keep elephants safe from the cruelty and abuse of the logging and trekking industries.
To contribute towards elephant conservation and support their ethical treatment, do not support any elephant parks or camps that offer riding, bathing in the ocean, or elephants performing any unnatural behaviors.
Conclusion
The island of Phuket is home to 235 magnificent Asian elephants. These creatures are indigenous to Thailand, but sadly the species has been exploited by the logging, trekking and tourism industries.
There are four highly reputable, 100% ethical elephant sanctuaries and parks in Phuket that tourists are encouraged to visit:
- The Phuket Elephant Sanctuary, near Paklok.
- The Elephant Retirement Park, near Bangtao Beach.
- The Elephant Jungle Sanctuary, near Naithon Beach.
- Phang Nga Elephant Park in the small, rural village of Phang Nga.
All these places offer guests the experience of seeing elephants up close in a natural, tranquil setting where they are not required to perform any tricks or give people rides.
Visitors can go on half-day, day-long, overnight, and even weekend-long tours of the sanctuaries. One can see how the mahouts care for the animals, help to feed them, bathe them, and even swim with them.
Tourists need to be very selective of the elephant parks and camps they visit in Thailand. Many do not uphold the values of ethical elephant tourism and these places should not be supported.
By visiting ethical elephant sanctuaries and parks, one can contribute to the elephants’ welfare and to the conservation of Asian elephants in Thailand. The elephant sanctuaries and parks rely on admission fees to pay for the animals’ food, housing, and medical care, so by visiting them you directly support the elephants.
