Jessika is an Enrolment Services Coordinator working in the Student Records Portfolio. Jessika says: “The best thing about working in ES is the people that it consists of! Everyone is incredibly supportive and genuinely caring towards each other – I’ve never been part of a more supportive team before this!”
Jessika, tell us where you jet-setted off to?
Just short of a month ago, I travelled to the city of Chiang Mai in Thailand. Having grown up in South East Asia, Chiang Mai was close and dear to my heart. Since I just got married last year, I wanted to show my husband a small part of my home. Chiang Mai is probably one of the most beautiful cities in Thailand. It is filled with flowers, and happy smiling people. No matter where we went, we were met with happy faces, whether in the markets or the streets.
What was one of your most memorable moments during your trip?
While we were in Chiang Mai, we visited the Elephant Nature Park. This park focuses on creating a safe home for rescued, tortured and often injured elephants from the Northern region of Chiang Mai. In this park is the home of over 80 elephants. The elephants here live in pure freedom — they decide when to walk, scratch themselves, swim, eat or dust bathe. This is hopefully a start of a new trend in the rest of Chaing Mai.
We got to spend the entire day with two old granny elephants, Sa-ard and Happy. At our first encounter with the two grannies, Sa-ard, young at heart, rushed towards us thinking it was already time for her breakfast feeding. Did you know that Elephants eat 10% of their body weight? Eating is pretty much their entire day. She approached us even before we were ready to feed her.
Oh by the way, don’t get near an elephant if you’re not prepared to constantly feed them. Elephants are gentle souls for the most part. They are playful and kind too. But they’re not messing around when it comes to their feeding. They’ll get mad at you if you fail to feed them. They will even try to go into your food bag to steal bananas. Don’t be fooled, they know where you hid it.
And we even got to bathe them! Which was kind of pointless because moments after bathing them in the river, they decided to bathe themselves with dust. They do this as a natural sunscreen which also helps them keep cool in scorching heat!
What is a must-try food in Chiang Mai?
Khao Soi — crispy fried noodles on the top and cooked noodles at the bottom, on a bed of thick and delicious coconut curry based sauce, topped with your choice of protein. You think we have a pretty good selection of Thai food here in Vancouver, well think again. Once you’ve had khao soi in Chiang Mai, your idea of curry noodles will be forever transformed.
Last question – do you have any advice for our future jet-setters?
Respect your surroundings. Observe the people around you and see how they treat nature, and ultimately each other.
There’s a lot of love in Chiang Mai. If you ever get a chance to visit the elephants in Chiang Mai, before deciding to ride them, find out more about the conditions in which they live and work under. If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend visiting the Elephant Nature Park. They do some amazing work rescuing, rehabilitating, and caring for not just elephants, but also orphan dogs, and cats. They work together with local families to care for over 80 elephants, 400+ dogs, and over 1000 cats.
It is mesmerizing to see these majestic giants wild and free from the hurt inflicted by the commercialized elephant industry. You wouldn’t expect such giants to harness such gentleness and kind demeanor. But from merely spending one day with Sa-ard and Happy, I’ve learned that there’s no limit to the amount of affection and respect elephants have among each other. This is something that we as humans can learn from in how we carry forward.