The brown circles stretching across the grass didn’t initially grab my attention as the caddie drove down the fairway at Khao Yai Country Club. My partner and I were in the midst of a tight match on day five of my first ever trip to Thailand. However when the caddie gave me a nudge , pointed and said: ‘elephant’ , my eyes instantly lit up. Elephants are a sacred animal in Buddhist Thailand , where around 8,000 Asian elephants currently live in the wild.