I Love Phants Lodge <- Google Maps Link
Apparently it's a money making arm of Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT), which operates a forest animal rescue operation. I have visited this, but never got smart enough to continue down the road to I Love Phants.
If you decide to visit, you should definitely avoid the directions offered by Google Maps. Instead, go to WFFT first and then continue south on the unpaved road to the lodge.
I did follow Google and ended up at this turnoff:
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I walked my bicycle across this. It was only shin deep
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Eventually I came across some small pens like this:
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A little further and I was on the veranda of the I-Love-Phants lodge. It overlooks a huge enclosure where I saw around half a dozen elephants; none very close. There were also Gibbons cavorting in the trees and plenty of birds.
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This is the lodge. It doesn’t look very new, which enhances my puzzlement regarding never having heard of it. I met two Thai tourists and a group of ten German women.
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They have a nice cafe which was serving a buffet breakfast for guests. I got a hot cappuccino and sat watching the elephants. The only sign I ever saw on the premises or on any of the roads is the small one behind the counter here. Are they trying to hide? Based on their website they seem to get lots of visitors. The rooms are not cheap. They have rooms in the main lodge plus rooms in individual cottages.
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After finishing my coffee I asked one of the staff for the bill (in Thai). She looked as if I’d just handed her the most difficult math problem in the world. After a few seconds her colleague whispered in her ear, in Thai, “hot cappuccino”. That started another long thinking process after which she said, 65 baht. The thing is, every single one of their hot coffee drinks costs 65 baht. No thought was required.
Based on my prior visit to the area I figured that exiting through a nearby temple would involve a lot less mud and water then the way I entered. So, I then asked how to get to the temple. This resulted in even more deep thinking which involved all three staff members. One turned her back to me and started flapping her arms around as if making semaphore signals. Turns out she was just trying to figure out which of her arms was left and which was right. she guessed wrong. At that point I was ready to change my question to, “How are you going to get home tonight?” I knew this would involve passing by the temple and simplify matters a bit. Instead I just gave up and started riding. Eventually I passed by a worker who was feeding an elephant in a pen. I asked if I was on the right road to the temple and he said, “straight ahead”.
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