Baan Khok Chang Elephant Sanctuary is a great family day out

Research shows that a great outdoor environment can enhance your health -- physically and mentally.

Spending time in the wilderness is also a good recreational idea that presents a lower risk of contagion particularly during the virus outbreak.

For holidaymakers looking to get back to nature, Baan Khok Chang Elephant Sanctuary in Prachuap Khiri Khan offers something truly worth a three hour's drive from Bangkok.

The sanctuary is an initiative of Monsoon Valley, a homegrown vineyard enveloped by forested hills 50km from the coastal town of Hua Hin.

The vineyard has been known to finance projects improving the habitat for elephants and wild cattle, at risk of extinction, in Prachuap Khiri Khan's Kui Buri National Park. It successfully helped rehabilitate a small herd of wild gaur and banteng inside the national park into several hundred.

Monsoon Valley also works with the local community and rangers around its vineyard to revive and restore the natural surroundings.

Its on-site elephant conservation programme, the Baan Khok Chang Elephant Sanctuary, rescues elephants from hard labour and mainstream tourist traps. It also provides them with a chain-free habitat with plenty of grounds and grassland to roam around and feed on.

Another significant species in the sanctuary is the hornbill. The exotic bird is regarded as a fertility indicator of an ecosystem. When a hornbill takes flight, it drops seeds to the forest floor. As many as 500,000 trees can be sprouted by one hornbill, according to ornithology studies.

Unfortunately, over the past years, the hornbill's habitat has been threatened. Large trees with cavities for the birds to nest for are now very low in number.

Thus the Monsoon Valley team has worked with ecology researchers as well as designers to help develop artificial nest for the hornbills.

Wine barrels from the industry are supplied and carefully installed in four hornbill habitats within the vineyard and its surrounding hills.

The installation, starting in 2017, proved a success and more hornbills have been spotted in the area since.

Visitors to the vineyard can walk to all four habitat locations of the birds as well as observe the elephants in their natural surroundings at the on-site sanctuary.

The vineyard is located at Baan Khok Chang Patana, tambon Nong Phlup, Hua Hin, Prachuap Khiri Khan province.

It opens daily from 11am-5pm. Entrance fee is 200 baht per person. All proceeds are used to support the sanctuary.