Sunday Times 2
Mammoth amounts of stress? Try an elephant massage!
Being trampled on by a three-tonne elephant is not usually the first thing that springs to mind when thinking about ways to relieve stress.
But tourists are flocking to a jungle camp in Thailand for just that.
The spa treatment is being offered in Chang Mai province, where a number of Asian elephants – that weigh anywhere from 2.25 to 5.5 tonnes – administer the massage using their trunks and feet.
An elephant prepares to massage a mahout while performing for tourists at Mae Sa elephant camp. AFP
But the unusual massage certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted – with a wrong move having potentially deadly results.
Ian Maclean, from Hawaii, USA, captured two foreign tourists – one male and another female – lying on the ground with a towel over their midriff.
The giant Asian elephant is then led up to the tourists by a mahout, before ‘gently’ patting them to replicate the techniques used by masseurs.
Ian said: ‘During my travels around Asia I have seen many unusual animal massages including one with four Burmese pythons.
‘In places like Thailand entrepreneurial safari park owners see it as a way of making some extra money.
‘But this elephant one is a little more challenging purely thanks to the animals sheer size and power.
‘It looked quite dangerous and I saw many years ago the perils when an elephant stepped on a tourist’s leg. You can imagine what happened and the pain that person was in.
‘But if you are brave enough, it is one for the bucket list.’
© Daily Mail, London