One of the things I am most excited for in Chiang Mai is, since the moment Mama tells us about it, is to go to the Elephant Poopoopaperpark, where they make paper out of elephant poo!
So, of course, when we set off just after a great breakfast at 10 am, when Mama calls the Grab Cab (the local Asian Uber 🚕), I can’t wait to arrive. Even Vyas, who is angry because he ” ‘do(es)n’t want to touch poo, it’s disgusting!”, doesn’t get my mood down which is saying something 😜🤩! When we arrive, a nice man who will be our guide welcomes us before we start the tour where we will discover how the paper is made, step by step.
The little park is beautifully arranged within a garden – trees and flowers everywhere with handpainted signs shouting out little joyful quotes (Emerson: The Earth smiles in flowers…) or wordplays around the poo theme (poopoo chip cookies anyone?)
The steps to make the elephant poo paper
First, the poo is dried in the sun for up to a week. This separates the fibers from the rest of the excrements, before getting boiled for 3 hours to disinfect it.
The next step is coloring. The fecal matter’s fiber is put inside a machine along with natural coloring, like turmeric for orange. Used pieces of paper of the color wanted are also put inside the mixture. When the machine has finished mixing it together, the mixture is rolled into a ball of color, before being put into a sort of rectangular mold (like we the one we saw at the paper mill at the end of classe verte last year), then dried in the sun ☀️.
Thereafter, the paper is sent to a paper factory to get even smoother and more flattened out. Et voilà! Now we can unleash our creativity and turn the paper into cool keepsakes!
We each choose a preferred object to decorate: I pick a diary, the boys wallets. We have a range of poo-paper items to choose from to glue onto our objects: letters, sayings, animals, flowers….. We could go on forever but we’ve already been here for over three hours, it’s time to meet Papa in town for lunch. On the way out, I select a poo-made notepad for my cousin Sonali to send back to her. We had such a nice time, even Vyas had to admit that, “It really wasn’t disgusting but great fun!”
