Chiangmai Elephant Legend - Elephant Sanctuary Head Office — Local services in Chiang Mai Province

[Originally posted on TripAdvisor]

Chiangmai Elephant Legend was absolutely brilliant, I couldn't recommend it higher!

We paid 1900 baht per person (which is much cheaper than a lot of other places!) and were picked up promptly in a clean, luxurious car by our guide for the day, Pam. There was no one else in our group at all!

On the way to the sanctuary itself, we picked up pad thai and snacks for ourselves for later, and were set to chopping up lots of sugar cane for the elephants!

We then got to meet two lovely female elephants rescued from factory work and being ridden, and got lots of time to feed and pat and get to know them! The elephants were free to mill about and eat as they pleased, and were only guided by two mahouts speaking to them - no sticks, canes, chains or hooks. The sanctuary itself was beautiful, with acres of land and crop for the elephants to roam through and feed on.

We then got to bathe the elephants in a shallow river (the water goes halfway up your calves - wear shorts!) but they didn't feel like having a mud bath, and weren't forced to have one by the mahouts.

Finally, we made vitamin balls and fed the elephants more, before saying goodbye and heading off the property to a beautiful little waterfall a short drive away.

We were dropped off to our hotel after this, but not before stopping for some delicious thai iced tea in a picturesque little café!

The entire experience was PHENOMENAL - the serene setting, the ample time to spend with the elephants, the love and care they are clearly given, and especially our guide Pam. Her English is excellent and she gave us so much information on the elephants, and had the bubbliest personality. She also took over 200 pictures of us on her DSLR for free!

Honestly, this will likely remain the highlight of our entire Chiang Mai experience!...

If it was possible to give 7 out of 5 stars, I would do it on this company!

Such an excellent tour: responsible, ethical, fun, well-organized and professional.

Tour guide Pam is just the best: caring, smiling, smart, attentive, beautiful, informative and just all-around a genuinely great person! I wish you all the best and keep up the good work that you do.

It is a difficult task to choose between all these kinds of tour operators but Chiangmai Elephant Legend is absolutely the right choice if you appreciate an ethical and responsible tour.

No hooks, no chains, no riding and the elephants decide on their own what they want to do. Most of the time they want to eat and customers got sucar cane pieces so they are glad to be with you flapping their ears and swinging their tails.

Lunch was also very good and there was enough of it, all day long Pam took excellent care of us (also better driver than most I have encountered in Asia) and I simply have nothing to complain about.

Oh and by the way: Pam seems to also be a professional photographer and she photographed us tirelessly all day long and after the tour sent us all the photos via email. So you don't even have to worry about that, you can just enjoy the company of the elephants!

And as the price is only 1900 baht for the whole day, it really is the deal of a lifetime in my opinion (I just regret I didn't give Pam a tip since I forgot about it during drop-off hassle - and I never give tips to tour operators)!

I hope I remembered to write everything I wanted to and to sum it up: just a perfect day, choose this tour operator and you will not regret it!

THANK YOU...

Great experience!! Lots of time with the gentle giants in this ethical sanctuary. Fed them, swam with them in a mud pit while they played together (very cute, the elephants we were with were young and playful) and bathed off in the river together. Pam and Bow were excellent hosts. Excellent food too—pad Thai, fruit, and mango sticky rice. A small group so not overcrowded. Ended the day with a walk to a waterfall. The guides take pictures for you to have on a disc at the end of the day. The elephants were never treated badly from what we could see, and always appeared to be content and happy to be fed. Hopefully this is true behind the scenes too. We saw some horrific treatment of elephants (in passing while we were on a hike) in Koh Samui so it was a relief to see the elephants treated respectfully. No riding, hooks, chains, or small pens.. they just want to eat, play, and are free to roam around on the acreage. The company says Your money goes towards supplying food for the elephants. I thought this was a worthwhile experience. My only critique, for which I am really digging deep here, is that for parts of the day it really felt like a paparazzi photoshoot, where much of the attention was on getting good pictures.. would have loved to learn more about the elephants histories, care, and...