Postcard: King’s Cup Elephant Polo, Bangkok

Elephant Polo was to be the highlight of my Bangkok birthday celebrations last week. We bought VIP tickets in support of the fundraising efforts on behalf of elephants across Asia. The King’s Cup Elephant Polo is now a well-established event in its 16th-year event. Think Ascot with elephants.

Why is it so important to support the elephants in Thailand?

The elephant is celebrated in Thailand as the national animal, revered for its strength, durability, and longevity. Elephants are a sacred animal in Thai Buddhist culture. In the 17th century, around 20,000 elephants were war animals. Our British Queen has corgi’s, the Thai royals have traditionally had elephants.

In more recent times elephants were the backbone of the timber industry they played a vital part in family income and in developing the Thai economy in the teak business. Elephant logging however also brought about the demise of the elephants’ natural habitat and was banned in the late 1980’s.

In current times many domesticated elephants are unemployed. You can still ride elephants in Thailand, but the numbers of tourists interested to do so have declined especially amongst western tourists.

If you are a mahout with an elephant that eats 8% of its body weight daily with less and less opportunity to earn an income, you have an expensive problem.

I am a resident of Thailand. I come from a different culture, I have different values and see many things which insense my western view of what is right. Cockfighting is one thing. I am an honoured guest in a far away and foreign land. What am I to think about Elepolo and perhaps who am I to judge?

I mean I have ridden camels at the pyramids, I have ridden racehorses and many years ago even rode out on my pony fox hunting. Twelve years ago whilst in Cambodia, every one of us on our Australian Association visit rode on elephants without thinking.  Now I wouldn’t dream of it.

To say the elephant situation in Thailand is complex is an understatement.

What is your view on Elephant Polo?

In my mind, I wasn’t that impressed with the whole idea of Elephant Polo but just as I have been to the Melbourne Cup when living in Australia, when in Thailand and all that…

I was being given an amazing opportunity to get up close and personal with elephants to learn more about these wondrous animals and to support the work of an Elephant Foundation that we first came across years ago on our honeymoon at the Anantara Golden Triangle.

The fact that the event was situated at the beautiful Anantara Riverside Hotel was a plus, we could take a boat down the Chao Praya river to the hotel and finish our journey on specially laid on Tuk Tuks. It doesn’t get any more brilliant Bangkok than this. Or does it?

Certainly, Elephant Polo seems at best frivolous but at worse could it be cruel? It doesn’t seem that natural having lumbering elephants playing polo but …

In reality is it actually a really great way of offering an event to raise vital funds for elephant conservation and a unique way to attract people to come and donate?

The event is one of the biggest charity events in South East Asia. The polo aspect and elephant care are closely monitored by the foundation vets.

Friday 9th March – the flood & elephant cruelty video

Early Friday morning a massive storm hit Bangkok and we were all mopping up across the city. The tournament site was inundated. The flooded area created perfect conditions for water polo but the play was canceled and around the site, sponsors were frantically trying to clean up the boggy mess.

The only elephants I saw that day were the plastic ones!

As if this wasn’t a big enough a headache for the management team, by the evening animal rights activists had released a video allegedly showing a tournament mahout beating an elephant. Anantara Hotels, Resorts, and Spas were quick to respond with a statement.

Ele Polo, Bangkok was beginning to make news headlines for all the wrong reasons: Here is how it was covered on SkyNews.

Needless to say, I had a sleepless night. The last thing I wanted to do was to support animal cruelty. I seriously questioned whether to return our VIP ticket, what was the real story here?

Sat 10th March

We decided to go to the event in advance of our VIP day and judge for ourselves whether it was something we felt comfortable supporting.

The ground remained flooded and not suitable for Elephant Polo  For the second day running there was no elephant polo played. Instead, the winners from each scheduled match were decided by a penalty shootout. Whereby each team would line up and each rider with a mahout would stand in front of an empty goal and shoot. It wasn’t the most exciting sport I have to say, however it must have been harder than it looked as we were surprised by the number of misses.

We did, however, see an amazing Thai Warrior performance with the elephants in ceremonial dress, and Thai dancers. It was very spectacular.

Throughout the day the crowd had the opportunity to interact with the elephants. We stood transfixed as one of the elephants was a master of collecting money in her trunk and handing it to her mahout.

At the Chang Beer tent (Chang means elephant in Thai), I spotted a polo player and took the opportunity to tell him of my dilemma given the elephant abuse video.

Was I supporting a great fundraising event or condoning animal cruelty?

He told me how it was a great honour for the mahouts to have their elephants selected to compete at the King’s Cup. He was an experienced filmmaker with the National Geographic and had spent much time filming animals, including elephants in the wild. In his mind, the animals were not broken but were social beings enjoying the experience. He told me about the veterinary care and how the funds used are to help both wild and domesticated elephants.

I felt a whole lot happier after this conversation. Certainly from what we could see the elephants appeared to be relaxed around people. These elephants were up to third generation domestic elephants right or wrong this was the life they knew.

I still had a dilemma, were these elephants broken spirits?

Sunday 11th March Elephant Polo

You can read about our participation in this event on my post: Elephant Sunrise Yoga here 

I loved the elephant breakfast, I have never had such a lovely close up and personal experience with elephants. Maybe it was because I was feeding them bananas but they certainly looked happy!

We left to have breakfast at the Anantara. Alongside the river following yoga and a lovely elephant experience and everything felt good and pretty zen.

Later that day a second elephant cruelty video is released and you can clearly see us on our yoga mats with the title ‘Elephants Forced to Watch Yoga’. Our support of the elephant foundation is once again called into question as to whether this was the right way to support this organisation?

We did not witness anything that we thought was overtly cruel to the elephants participating, although I do recognise there will be those that say the elephants’ very presence at the tournament, being dressed up, collecting money and standing by watching in inherently degrading and cruel.

Indeed for me it was quite the contrary the elephants themselves seemed relaxed and at ease. They moved around the site with ease and no cajoling. The mahouts we saw appeared to have a strong bond with their animals. Those involved in elephant conservation work who dedicate their lives to love and care of elephants found the claims of animal abuse at the event extremely upsetting as did we.

Definitely, the best part of the event was the historical Elephant parade with Thai warrior show and the elephant breakfast buffet. Was this cruel, degrading to the animals, it didn’t feel like it.

Our morning of yoga with the elephants was lovely… until we ended up featured on an animal rights video!

Would we return to Elephant Polo Bangkok? Unlikely. I would much rather donate my money directly to the organisation. In a perfect world, all elephants would run free, but history has led us to the point where this is not the case.

I value the work of the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation. I am sickened by the visuals on the video of the mahout beating the elephant. I understand that there is a lot of work to be done in the area of mahout education and I wish every working in this very important field all the very best as they strive to find the best balance between what is best for the elephants and what will be the best way to bring in the funds.

Namaste!

Linking with thanks to all the hosts at Our World Tuesday and Eileen at Saturday’s Critters