Ran-Tong Elephant Rescue Sanctuary
11/10/2025
We did an excursion about an hour north of town to visit an elephant sanctuary. The sanctuary we visited is devoted to saving abused and domestic elephants across Thailand. They are rated as one of the best ethical elephant sanctuaries in Chiang Mai for learning, bathing, feeding & interacting with elephants.
They are vegetarian (good for them!). We fed the adults corn and the younger ones bananas. And we made what they referred to as vitamins for them. It was a big mashed up glob of some healthy stuff that we wrapped in banana leaves and gave to them. One elephant didn’t like the banana leaves and carefully removed them with his trunk and ate just the contents. So clever!
There were about 10 elephants at the sanctuary. The youngest was two years old. They live about 60-70 years, the adults weigh about 6000-7000 pounds and eat roughly 500 pounds of food per day!! They only sleep about 2-3 hours a day and remain standing the other 21-22 hours.
The ones we were interacting with were very much domesticated and could never survive in the wild again. Some were rescued from logging and one was rescued from the circus. They were so cute and so friendly!
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