Playing with cats

Our second day in Bangkok will be put down in my books as perhaps one of my favorite afternoons of travel in Thailand. That’s some big accolades. The day started off with Dan, Ryan. Greg and myself rushing around at a somewhat early hour trying to make sure our things were together for Phuket (we were flying out that night with Derek and Jeff), finish up paying for our hostel/making sure that while all of us will be gone for the day our things will be safe, and our regular morning routines. With no time for breakfast we were picked up, early, by our driver for the day named, Pon. The four of us piled into the back of his van and were ready to start the day. We requested one stop at McDonalds and then we started our day.

First stop, the war graves. This was our shortest and probably our most uninteresting stop of the day. We met up with our tour guide for the day. She gave us a quick education about the war graves, then we wandering the graves. Honestly I hardly remember what she said. The graveyard was full of graves honoring Australia, Dutch and English soldiers. From the graves we made our second stop, the death railway. This was very cool. We were at the Burma Thai Railway over the river Kwai. The history behind the railway was really interesting. We spent a little bit of time here walking along the railway looking out to the river Kwai. We ended the morning portion of tour by eating at a beautiful floating restaurant.

Now starts the real fun.

When Ryan told us that he had one, and only one thing that he wanted to do while in Thailand, I immediately thought “well, duh, we’ll have to do it”. It works out that his one thing, is also something that I was quite interested in. When Greg and I travel, usually to smaller towns, we like to incorporate animal interaction. So, when Ryan said “I need to walk a tiger”, Greg scoured the internet to find the best excursion for us. Insert, The Tiger Temple Tour (brought to us by Animal Planet).

We arrived at the temple after a long drive (about three hours away from Bangkok). The tigers are trained by monks at the Tiger Temple, so women need to be quite covered up. Unfortunately for me, on this scorching hot day I was covered wearing a flannel shirt and leggings. As soon as we walked in we were greeted by horses roaming, and a pit of water full of water buffalo-who would occasionally walk around. Various other animals were also roaming. We were instructed of rules and ways to keep safe while around the tigers. Our first stop was to an area full of tigers chained to the ground. Here we got to go up and pet the tigers, and have our pictures taken. It was somewhat bitter sweet. It was really cool that we got to be thatclose to the tigers (I think these tigers must have been teenagers), but it was also unnerving seeing them chained to the ground like that.

We paid a little bit extra to play with baby tigers. We took off our shoes and entered a room with baby tigers running around. We got to feed and play with them for about 45 mins. In this time we were all so smitten (and also bitten…). I would regularly forget that we weren’t just playing with kittens or dogs, these were baby tigers. Only after my first bite did I think “oy vey, this is a wild cat!” It was amazing, fun, and worth it.

After playing with the tiger cubs, we went onto walk a full grown tiger. We didn’t get to walk with it for long, but it was still so cool. And something I won’t forget. Before leaving for the day Ryan and I went to an area full of really big full grown tigers. The staff at the temple walks you around to different tigers (again, chained to the ground) and takes your picture. While kneeling down petting the biggest tiger I have ever been in contact with I could feel his inner growl tremble through his back and up through my hand. If this dude was hungry, I’d be dead. His tail whipped me in the back and it felt like a horse whip.

All in all it was a really reallly cool day. There isn’t too much I can say to describe the experience other, cool. It was definitely well worth it.
We had the chance to hang out with some other pretty rad animals. But, I’ll tell you about them another time.