I’m Plai Bang; this means ‘boy elephant’ in Thai. I’m a bit of a ‘Jack the Lad’, well, I used to be until it got me into trouble. You see, I was taken from my mother when I was only two years old. All-day long, I walked up and down the beach at a hotel, only stopping to have my photograph taken and to be fed watermelon and bananas.
By the time I was six, I was too big to be cute, so I moved to a riding camp where I would spend my days carrying people in a big chair. It was here that I used my wit and learned how to beg. I became that sweet little boy again making chirping sounds: the tourists loved this and fed me! I still do it now when I feel cheeky.
As I grew up, I felt empty because I missed my mother, and I started to go through musth, which is the equivalent of puberty in elephants. Only boy elephants go through this, and we can become aggressive for months. I’d challenge the other elephants and one day, I got into a horrible fight and hurt two of my friends. My behaviour led me to be chained up for five years. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, and I became sad about life; I lashed out, I threw things at people and generally became unpredictable. I was so stressed that I would spend much of my day swinging my head. Did you know that this is a sign of a very depressed and unhappy elephant?
Maew and the team at the Samui Elephant Haven decided that they would try and help me. Noi became my new mahout, and he is very patient with me, he has taught me a lot, and I know that he loves me: and I’ve calmed down and stopped swaying. They plan to provide me with a new enclosure of almost two acres, but they need to develop virtually half a kilometre of steel-reinforced concrete pillars to keep me safe. This costs a lot of money. I am 27 years old now and have the most spectacular tusks that cross over at the end
