Pack your trunk for family thrills in Thailand

Determined to give his sons a taste of the world beyond Europe, Ben Ross takes them on an elephant-centric adventure they’ll never forget

My wife, a veteran, vetoed the Khao San Road. Our boys could experience its dubious delights when they were a little older, she said. Instead, we would introduce them to Bangkok more decorously: rucksacks spiffed up into suitcases, creaking ceiling fans traded for air-con, sweaty sheets swapped for chilled hand towels. Hastily, I tucked my copy of Alex Garland’s backpacker classic The Beach back into the bookshelf. I love chilled hand towels.

The Anantara Riverside, located on the western bank of Chao Phraya river, is far enough from the hostels and bars of Khao San Road for you almost to forget that you’re in one of south-east Asia’s most hectic cities (and the chilled hand towels are great, too). It served as a gracious first stop on a two-week journey around Thailand designed to give Jamie, aged 13, and his younger brother Peter, 10, a taste of the world beyond Europe. My goal as a parent was shock and awe, a crash course in cultural dislocation. I wanted every experience to be new, from tuk-tuk rides to temples, monks to monkeys, lizards to lemon grass. But as far as the boys were concerned, it was always, always going to be about the elephants.

Drooping with jet lag, we took the hotel’s free river transfer to Saphan Taksin, from where a 40 baht fare (80p) on a passenger boat delivered us to Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace, Bangkok’s religious and cultural heart. The crowds here are immense, a throng that pushes you past the gaudy temples at a speed to be endured rather than enjoyed. The dress code, too, is strictly enforced. (“You, big boy! No short pants!” was how we were greeted at the entrance.)

Yet happily – despite their hastily donned long trousers – there were early signs that the children were prepared to be dazzled. Indeed, it’s almost impossible not to be impressed by the glittering spectacle: the choke of incense, the clatter of coins dropped into votive bowls, the emerald Buddha in its niche. Just over the road at Wat Pho, the boys were first amazed by the 46m-long reclining Buddha, then amused at the renovation work going on around its celebrated mother-of-pearl feet (“They’re saving his soles!”).

We soon got into the swing of things, overcoming that strange newcomer’s desire to eat Thai food in places that also serve pizza. Instead, we bought pork balls and noodle soup from street vendors, chewed on freshly diced pomegranate and supped on sweet pineapple slices delivered in plastic bags. Chinatown offered up a haphazard frenzy of monomaniacal stalls: hundreds of handbags available from one, car tyres in another, bathroom scales stacked dangerously high in a third. Smells, too: of drains, spices, rotten fruit and sweat.

Later, a day-trip to the ancient Thai capital of Ayutthaya – destroyed during a conflict with Burma in the 18th-century – was a chance for the grown-ups to gawp at ruined temples and for the boys to explore the grassy canal banks by rented bicycle. Much to their delight there was a first sight, too, of an elephant, albeit one pressed into what looked like rather dismal service next to a dusty roundabout.

From a tourist perspective, the treatment of elephants in Thailand was thrown into sharp relief in January with the news that a British visitor had been killed while riding an elephant on the tourist island of Koh Samui. Last year, too, a mahout was killed while trekking with a Chinese family near Chiang Mai. Animal rights groups cited overwork and stress as a likely cause of the elephants’ sudden aggression. Nevertheless, elephants were our primary focus at Anantara Golden Triangle, a spectacular retreat some 45 miles north of Chiang Rai at the convergence of Thailand, Burma and Laos. The property hosts 20 elephants and their mahouts on site, with most of the animals having been rescued from a life of street begging or illegal logging. Crucially, overwork and stress do not seem to be part of the picture here.

We attended an enthralling “elephant learning experience” run by Sophie Bergin, an Australian who arrived as a volunteer, stayed