The Tiger Temple

A while back I wrote about a trip I took to Kanchanaburi with my dad, Margaret and Justin. It was a nice town and had a lot of history but all the tuk-tuk drivers wanted to drive us to a “tiger temple” some 14 km away. Tiger temple, you say? Well I was certainly intrigued but we just didn’t have the time. That’s why when I was given the opportunity for a return trip with the sole purpose of visiting the tiger temple, I was totally on board.

I first imagined the tiger temple as a giant temple where tigers roamed free and you had to sign a waiver or something to enter the grounds. It wasn’t. Instead it was a wildlife conservation area that had lots of different animals roaming the grounds. There were water buffalo, deer, peacocks, and I saw one boar. The tigers were all down in a gorge lazing about. We got there in the early afternoon and most of them were just chilling. We got to walk around and take pictures with them which was really neat. Easily the biggest cats I’ve ever touched. I would’ve said seen but I saw that liger at King Richard’s Faire. Then we moved up the hill to where the tiger cubs were. These guys were very active and a lot more fun. There were monks walking around and leading them around on leashes which was super cool. A couple times they would get close to each other and wrestle which was great for photos. I actually took some pretty neat ones which you can see below. We spent a long time there just walking around and watching them play. Then it came time for the big tiger bath which was where they romped and frolicked in the water and would’ve been really cool if the tickets weren’t so expensive. The money all goes to keeping the park open which is nice, but we couldn’t have seen the water show and still had enough to get home so we decided to pack it up and head home.

The bus ride back to Bangkok took forever because instead of taking the highway like we did on the way up, we went through every town and made something like 30 unscheduled stops to drop people off at their homes. It was a nuisance, then absurd, then it just became silly. On top of all the stops we made, we were the last ones on the bus and they didn’t even take it to the bus station. We told them we were planning on taking a taxi home from the station so they let us off at some random place just inside the city limits that, I guess, was a great place to get a taxi. We were all starving so we ordered pizza. All in all a very good day.

The valley of the sleeping tigers


Naps


One of the FAQs was "Are they drugged?" The answer surprisingly was "No"


Playing around


I'm gonna have to put out a calandar


The Monks were pretty inked up


and finally, a tribute



much love
j