When you decide to go overseas on a volunteering trip you expect your days to be quite different to normal but what exactly can you expect to be doing all day?
Emma Thomson had a fantastic time in Thailand and was kind enough to share her experiences. Find out what a day in the life of a Thailand wildlife volunteer is like.
“For the first week with Elephants, in the morning we would prepare banana balls (a mix of banana, flax and elephant pellets) as well as feed them fruit and cut up food for the rest of the day. Then after breakfast we would clean their enclosures and sometimes take the elephant on a walk or maybe give them a mud bath or give them a shower. After lunch we would wash them, walk them and give them enrichments (food that is hidden around their enclosure to make them think and use their brain). There were also some days where in the morning we would go and harvest banana trees, so a truck would drive us out into the bush and we would spend about 2 hours picking up banana trees and moving them into the truck.
My second week was spent at the wildlife sanctuary where there were a bunch of different projects. I worked with primates first then bears, other wildlife and nocturnals. The main tasks were cutting fruit and feeding the animals in the morning. After breakfast we would do a water round and clean the enclosures and then we would do a ‘special project’ (cleaning a pool usually) . After lunch we would feed the animals again, do enrichments and water again.
We would work typically from 6:30am till approximately 5pm and would get 1 day off a week.”
As you can see days are quite long and there is lots of hard work to be done, but it is also incredibly rewarding and you are spending your days surrounded by incredible animals. If you think this is something you would like to get involved in or would like more information then check out our wildlife sanctuary website.
