National Elephant day in Thailand
Aware of the importance of elephant conservation, the Asian Elephant Foundation of Thailand and related non-governmental organizations in 1998 proposed that there should be a special day for elephants in Thailand. The proposal was submitted to the Coordinating Subcommittee for the Conservation of Thai Elephants under the National Identity Board. The Coordination Committee decided to pick 13 March each year as Thai Elephant Day, based on the fact that the Royal Forest Department designated the white elephant as the national animal of Thailand on 13 March 1963.
In May 1998, the Cabinet approved the designation of 13 March as Thai Elephant Day every year, starting in 1999. The decision was aimed at raising and sustaining public awareness of the importance of elephants. It is also designed to promote public participation in elephant preservation.
Elephants used to be found all over Thailand, domesticated over hundreds of years to live in some level of harmony with people, but these days there is less call for a working elephant. You no longer need one to ride into war – not even for a film, nor to work as beasts of burden in the forestry industry, they are no longer commonplace, an anachronism in the modern world. Good elephant camps, although not perfect, are one of the few places left where humans and elephants can work together rather than being in conflict.
Koh Chang means elephant island, (koh, island, chang, elephant). No one seems to know for sure why, there is even a crazy tale which involves an elephant swimming over from the mainland. Boringly, the name most probably refers to the island’s size, but we like the slightly more fanciful idea that it is because of the shape of the right side of the island, as you approach by ferry, squint a little and you can see the head and body of a sleeping elephant. Ignoring those that might have swum here, the rest were brought to the islands from the mainland first to work and then for the amusement of the tourists, although it is sometimes hard to see what is amusing for the tourist let alone the elephant in marching along the scrubland path by the dusty main road.
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