Elephant Tourism in Kanchanaburi
Karen
Village-Based Elephant Tourism in Sangklaburi
Located 18 kilometres from hilly Sangklaburi town along
Thai-Burma border, the Karen village of Baan Mai Pattana was originally called
"Chi Deng Cheng". Since 1984, the residents of six Karen villages relocated
here following the construction of Khao Laem Dam. Originally, only the Kui Ja
Tho, one of the six villages, captured elephants from the wild to help
transport rice. From under 10 elephants in the past, the number has now grown
up to 30. Female elephants comprise two third of the whole population. Of the
30 elephants, more than 10 are still involved in logging around Three Pagodas
Pass inside Burma. The elephants work there nearly all year round except for
three months of the dry season.
Elephant Camps
Apart from the only one village-based elephant tourism in
Sangklaburi, it may be surprising for some to know that there are more elephant
tourism camps here than expected in Kanchanaburi with quite a lot of elephants
employed. Currently, there are 10 lephant camps throughout the province. While
most of the elephants working there are hired from other parts of the country,
the northeastern in particular, some are from the border district of
Sangklaburi). They are among many elephants which became unemployed following
the 1989 national logging ban in Thailand.
Elephant riding tour started here in 1992 when we (Jumbo Travel
Centre) began encouraging villagers to establish elephant tourism. Before
working in tourism, the elephants used to work in logging and earned much more
than they earn from tourism. But logging elephants must work really hard over
long hours and their owners took pity on them and decided to involve them in
tourism only when the business was introduced to the village. The assistant
village headman is now leader of the village elephant camp. The camp is
situated on the ground in front of his house.
