Company: Elephant Village
Project: Elephant Museum
Goal: Add an element of education to Elephant Village tour itineraries.
Result: The first elephant Museum in Laos
Summary: Elephant Village is one of oldest elephant camps in Laos. By the time I began working there in 2013, it had already been in operation for a dozen years. For all those years it had been around, though, its tours had changed very little. It was and had always been a cookie cutter elephant camp that offered elephant riding as the mainstay attraction. The main distinction it had was that it was one of the first and longest operating elephant camps in Luang Prabang, Laos. During my time there, I always thought about different ways to improve the tours. One of the ideas I came up with was to add an educational element to the itinerary. I really thought about it from a tourist’s perspective. After having participated in all the tours, I noticed the lack of information around the camp. I wanted to know more about the history of elephants in Laos, the current state of elephants and their relationship to people. So naturally I wanted the make the tours more informative in as many ways as possible. I wanted people to come for more than just to ride elephants. At the camp I noticed there was an unused little building that we could put to good use. Naturally, I presented the idea of turning it into a little elephant museum where we can house various exhibits and informative sign boards.
We spent months planning and figured out the different exhibits and artifacts we can showcase in the museum. We dug up the bone remains of an elephant that passed a few years earlier, we had various tools that mahouts (elephant trainers) traditional used to train and control elephants. We had boards showing the alternative work hauling logs that captive elephants had. We had boards showing the evolutions of elephants over millions of years. We had boards showing the anatomy of Asian elephants. I designed all the signage in the museum and also around the camp.
Result: When it was all said and done, we had ourselves a nice little museum that added an element of education to the tours. It made the tours more meaningful and took attention away from the act of riding. This addition also made Elephant Village standout from other elephant camps. Visitors were perceiving Elephant Village as the most responsible elephant camp. This was important as more and more elephant camps were popping up as tourism began to boom in Luang Prabang during that time.
