June 11. River Kwai and D Day
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D-Day. THE birthday. A late and lazy morning with a late breakfast and an early lunch.A smart 6 seat SUV arrived and took us down the road to Nam Tok, where we had left the train two days before. We stopped briefly at the shops, found nothing particularly exciting, and then completed the half hour journey to the Tiger Temple. |
We entered an almost deserted area of rough scrubby plants and walked towards some buildings. There we found a tiger cub asleep in a cage and some other, more domesticated, animals near a very green pond. This offered the excitement of a small horse chasing a pig!
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In a small caged area, we were introduced to a monk and a sun bear. The bear was being fed a cooked chicken, in which it was slightly interested, and a packet of peppermints, about which it was extremely excited. It even went as far as ignoring the chicken in order to lick the empty mint packet to death.
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We were allowed to pat the bear, which the monk playfully cuffed about the head every so often in order to make it sit up and look respectable for the cameras. They seemed happy enough together and the bear didn't appear to object to its treatment at all. I believe it developed the habit of sleeping outside the toilets, blocking the entrance to potential users, which is why it is kept inside during visiting hours. |
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We walked a short distance to the Tiger Canyon, which resembled a small quarry, with towering cliffs. A waterfall tumbled over the cliffs and into a pond. In front of these was a flat area, on which sat about six tigers with two more soaking themselves in the pond. In front of them was a flimsy tape fence, behind which were lots of people, several fans, a huge cool box of bottled water and some seats under umbrellas.
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The tigers were surrounded by yellow clad handlers, who tried to arrange them into suitable poses, using varying levels of physical force. The tigers didn't seem to mind what was done to them, being mainly concerned with sleeping in the very hot afternoon sun.
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They were tied to stakes but, had they wished to leave the area, the light chains and leather leads wouldn't have held them for more than a few seconds.
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The whole performance was under the supervision of Abbot Pra Acham Phoosit, the monk who established the sanctuary. He holds the tiger encounter sessions to raise money to pay for the construction of his new tiger sanctuary. As soon as this has been completed, the encounter sessions will cease and the tigers, all bred at the sanctuary, will be left to their own devices to breed and generally get on with a normal life. |
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Valerie, Cory and Angie paid their money and plucked up their courage. After removing their hats and handing over their cameras, they were grabbed by the hand and led into the arena by a handler, who steered them towards the first tiger in the queue. This was the one which had its head placed in their laps and which, occasionally, became a bit frisky & got up & wandered about. |
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They were then moved on to the next big pussy which they were allowed to stroke. The handlers took photos of every participant, using their own cameras and would also take close-ups of the tigers if requested. No one was allowed to wear "hot" colours - red, pink etc - as they were supposed to upset the tigers and hats & cameras were removed as these could fall off and might be considered as toys by the big pussies.
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After completing one circuit, they went round again. Most of the animals were very much asleep so there wasn't a huge amount of animal-human interaction. I sat on my side of the fence taking as many photographs as I could.
After two and a half hours, the people were ushered to one side and the tigers were led back up the hill for their dinner.
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One of them was kept behind and a queue formed so that everyone could lead it for a few paces and be photographed once more. Needless to say, when it was Valerie’s turn, in the general crush, I had to snatch at my photo & it wasn't very good.
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We didn't stay to watch the feeding but were nearly caught in a stampede of horses and pigs which had heard the sound of the dinner gong and were rushing to claim their share. |
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On the drive home again, we stopped in Nam Tok to buy some of the coconut scrapers that I had so admired in the jungle and in a vain attempt to find some champagne or similar for Valerie's Birthday dinner. This was taken on the floating restaurant in splendid isolation. In the absence of fizz, we ordered a bottle of ordinary wine. This turned out to be as badly oxidised as I feared it would be in the heat. We managed to drink it, however, before mainly reverting to cold beer.
We ate a la carte for the first time in our stay, as we had only paid for food for the first two nights. This gave us much more choice of dishes but the food did seem to have been toned down for foreign palates. What a shame! Most Thai restaurants in New Zealand would have been better. After dinner we returned to our rooms and the others attacked the incredibly cheap local whisky in our mini-bars. I had a beer and crawled to bed at midnight, leaving the others to it.