I had originally planned to go to Lampang to a center that is an elephant hospital, as my parents wanted to go see elephants in a different context than walks and games.
Knowing that in her desire my mother was referring in particular to a center managed by a Thai who only offers to "play" mahouts, namely how to maintain an elephant, feed it, bathe it and observe them in their vast free space.
So looking I found that it was the Elephant Nature Park, you have to pay the price but it seemed worth it. After having therefore booked on their website the full day (at 2500 baht per person) so we had a stop in Chiang Mai, the center being about 1 hour north of the city.
This center serves, just like the hospital in Lampang, as a treatment center but also as a rehabilitation center for elephants left abandoned due to lack of money (they are expensive to maintain) often she (Lek the owner and creator of the center) buys them back from the mahouts who can no longer afford to keep them, particularly because it is forbidden to beg in the city by offering tourists to give bananas to the baby elephants as they used to do.
This practice is fortunately becoming increasingly rare because they are generally reported when they are seen in town by Thais.
On our journey today we will still take a stop at an unmissable temple in Nan, a little off-center to the south-east of it, the Wat Phra That Chae Haeng, founded in the 1350s at a time when the capital of the area was Pua in the north (where we passed by the way)
For more information on the temples of Nan and its region
