An ice-cool Thai tourist stood his ground as a five tonne elephant charged at him. The giant beast ran to within inches of the man, before letting out a shriek and turning away.
The incredible incident was recorded by the man’s friend, and has now become a must-see video on YouTube.
The man is 27-year-old engineer Tor Dowling. He was interviewed by Daily News and said he didn’t plan to react in the way he did, it was just his instinctive response. He doesn’t believe the animal wanted to hurt him.
Dowling had taken a month off work to travel around his native Thailand. He was wandering through the nature reserve in Phu Luang with his friend. They had just been to see a fossilised dinosaur footprint. As they made their way out of the dense forest they came across a modern-day giant, the Asian elephant.
Dowling spotted the animal through the leaves and stood still watching it. The elephant stared back for a few seconds before bursting out and charging straight at Dowling.
While most would scream and run at this point, Dowling kept calm and lifted his arm up as if to wave the animal away.
Amazingly, the elephant seemed to obey and stopped just inches in front of him. It paused for a second and let out a shriek, before turning and running back into the forest.
Dowling was so composed he even turned to his friend with a big grin on his face, before looking back to the elephant and snapping a couple of pictures for his photo album.
There’s one holiday story that won’t bore his friends and colleagues to tears!
Unfortunately the video has since been removed from YouTube.
