Elephants on the Streets of Bangkok

It used to be the time when you would see elephants begging on the streets of Bangkok nearly every day. Both big and small, though their mahouts seem to favour the baby ones. They would do tricks for the tourists and the mahouts would then ask for the onlookers to buy overpriced bananas and sugar cane. This wasn’t just for foreign tourists, Thai people also bought the bananas as a way for making merit. It is believed to be lucky for pregnant women to walk underneath the belly of an elephant. Obviously, walking on the hard streets of Bangkok and breathing in all of the fumes is not very healthy for the elephants. Apart from that, some of them have been involved in automobile accidents. It is now actually illegal for mahouts to bring elephants into Bangkok though you still sometimes see them on the outskirts. This one was spotted yesterday at Future Park in Rangsit.

One thought on “Elephants on the Streets of Bangkok

  • February 9, 2013 at 9:34 pm
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    I saw a documentary on this a while back. Until then I thought that the people selling food were just exploiting the elephants. Apparently for a lot of them the owners are stuck with them after they have been domesticated if they are no longer used for deforestation work due to more efficient machines replacing them. Due to the amount Elephants have to eat etc on a daily basis the owners have no choice but to bring them to Bangkok as they cant afford to look after them otherwise.

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