Pang Chang Kamala

Pang Chang Kamala is an elephant trekking business attempting to come off as an elephant refuge or sanctuary of some sort. They call it an elephant camp. Who’s camping? Only over time can people become more enlightened about what kind of behavior goes on in elephant trekking businesses all over Asia.

The ice-pick type weapons the mahouts have are not for show. They lodge them right in the elephant’s head to keep them in line. That’s like someone stabbing a knife or a screwdriver into the elephant’s head when it does the slightest thing wrong. This would seem to be worst of it until you consider what they have to do to elephants to break them into being docile enough to ride people on their backs. Look it up on YouTube, and become instantly enlightened about the kind of animal cruelty you’re promoting by riding elephants in Thailand, or anywhere.

TripAdvisor is covered in reviews of cruelty and “Please Don’t Go!” on the first page of this activity. Elephants are not like horses, which simply need ridden in order to break them in. Elephants must be chained helpless in one place as the mahouts beat them with bamboo or other heavy sticks and bloody them up with the ice-picks before an elephant will lose all will to fight and succumb to being mounted. Elephants kill tourists and mahouts each year because they are under such severe stress. Please do not pay money to any elephant business which is not a verified sanctuary. Here’s a clue, if they’re riding the elephants, it isn’t a sanctuary.

Pang Chang Kamala is located (as the name says) in Kamala, just north of Patong Beach and south of the lovely Surin Beach. This is on the west side of the island of Phuket.