Around The World, Part Eight

Contributed by: filbert Tuesday, March 18 2008 @ 07:22 PM CST

BROKEN LINKS!!!

Our Round The World Trip home page is here.
Part Seven is here.

October 11 (Thursday, Day 10, Bangkok, continued) –

A monk started Tiger Temple in 1994. Somehow a hurt tiger was given to the monk. (There are about 225 wild tigers left in Thailand’s forests.) The monk decided to take care of it and now has a wildlife sanctuary that contains 22 tigers, deer, pigs, water buffalo, a lion cub, a sun bear, etc., etc., etc. Tong and a worker took us to a cage that had Bam Bam in it. Bam Bam is the sun bear and we got to go in the cage and feed her mangoes and soy milk. It was pretty amazing to be standing next to a bear holding a bottle in its mouth while it was on its hind legs and using its front paws (with sharp claws) to try to also hold the bottle. We had to hurry and leave Bam Bam in order to see the tigers.

Snookums and Bam Bam

Around 12:30 every day some of the tigers are released from their cages. It was pouring rain and she wasn’t sure they would release the tigers but they did. There was an open muddy yard and the fully grown tiger was chained to a tree trunk and four or five others were running loose so that we could go up to them and take pictures and touch them. Two of them were cubs and didn’t have chains on at all while the middle sized ones had leash chains and sometimes the workers would have to grab a chain to keep them from getting to “friendly” with a tourist. One lady did get clawed on her thigh and the marks turned into welts. It was no big deal, but was kind of neat to see and we were kidding her about getting a free souvenir. She said they stung a lot, but she didn’t seem to be any worse for wear. Filbert had one of the medium sized ones take a swipe at his backside and ended up with muddy tiger prints on his vest and butt. After awhile the monks took the tigers from the open yard down to the canyon. We could also interact with them in the canyon and the workers took our pictures with each one.