The Anantara Golden Triangle was absolutely awesome. We had a wonderful time... the hotel was superb and the staff were very friendly. We primarily went for the elephant camp (which was great and was well worth the trip), but we were pleasantly surprised by the rest of the experience, which put the whole experience over the top.
We ended up doing the Mahout Training, which we great. The camp had an Australian intern studying to be a zookeeper, which added wonderful context to the whole thing. Hopefully, they regularly have students there to help out. Some of the Mahouts speak english, but many do not (apparently, the sanctuary "rescues" the mahouts, as well as the elephants, because the mahout has devoted most of his life to the elephant, so when the elephant is rescued and goes to the sanctuary, if the mahout didn't also go, he would be left to a very tough existence), but they were still very nice and warm. We also did the cooking class, which we thought was wonderful and Por (the teaching chef) was wonderful and energetic.
The only negatives to the whole trip were (1) I definitely gained a couple pounds from delightful food, and (2) we spent our time at Anantara at the beginning of a couple weeks in Asia and it ruined our expectations for the rest of the trip (as it will be hard for any place to live up to it).
Overall, I highly recommend it and it is definitely worth its premium price.