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Published: April 22nd 2008
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I may look calm...
... but I'm actually pooing my little pants... Maya awakes early and spends her morning catching up on the diary on the porch. I waver between sleep and waking, interspersing vivid tropical dreams with sections from Will Self's 'Book Of Dave'. I honestly couldn't tell you which is the more psychedelic. Faced with two such enjoyable engagements, however, I'm reluctant to join Maya in the land of the living. Eventually I do, persuaded mainly by being bodily tipped onto the floor and left floundering by she herself.
Maya's been watching a hippy man desperately attempting to re-enact some dodgy, half-baked version of Tai Chi. This is one of the guys who's read all the books and studied the diagrams, but still hasn't quite got the precise idea of exactly what it is he's supposed to be doing. We lap it up for the sheer entertainment value as matey seemingly attempts to describe in mid air with his fingertips the shape of the Millenium Falcon.
By lunchtime, we're on a bus to the tiger temple, after spending an enjoyable half an hour playing with the mynah birds in reception. These animals, through their mimicry of Thai phrases such as 'sawadhi kaaaap' and 'kawp kun kaaap' teach me more
about correct pronunciation than any human or phrasebook could hope to.
The temple itself is, although excellent fun, rather more touristy than we'd imagined. We walk down the slope into a natural canyon where, at the bottom, seven or eight adult tigers lie, dozing, on the floor. They're restrained by enormous chains that look like they should be anchoring large cargo ships to the ocean floor, but these restraints seem unneccessary as the tigers are mostly fast asleep. I've never been so close to a tiger without a very substantial array of iron bars keeping the potential diner from his lanky human lunch, and despite the chain and the numerous chaperones and attendants that keep tourist and tiger apart (except for the photos), I'm still nervous as I lay my right hand on the muscle-packed, flame orange flank of an enormous cat. His whiskers twitch as I touch him, and his fur quivers as if he's being settled on by some irritating insect. He isn't far wrong. Am I stroking him too softly? Should I be less vague about it? Am I just winding him up? Am I spending the last few seconds of my life with my right
arm still attached to my body? As it happens, the shutter clicks, the tiger remains restful and I'm ushered on to the next cat for another photo call.
One gets the impression that tourists are tolerated by these powerful cats. Nobody could hope to believe that they honestly enjoy it and benefit from it directly. However there's a good reason for parading these animals around for money - our dosh goes directly into funding the rescue of wild cats who may be under threat from habitat destruction or poaching, and introduces them into a breeding program in which cubs are raised and then either hopefully released back into the wild or kept to breed again themselves. It's an age-old debate, whether endangered animals are better off being kept in captivity or not, but one thing is for sure - if this sanctuary didn't exist, neither would most of these tigers. The Chinese black market for tiger products would be slightly better off (certain parts of a tiger are said to be an excellent aphrodisiac by some) and the global number of these beautiful creatures would be even smaller. It isn't ideal, keeping them in captivity like this where they
A bit more my size...
... come on then, pipsqueak... fund their own prolonged existence by entertaining tourists, but what's the alternative?
The sanctuary started a long time ago, when a local farmer found an abandoned cub whose mother had been killed by poachers. Unsure of what to do with it, he gave it to the abbot at a local Buddhist monastery. Its teeth had been filed down by the poachers who had left it for dead. The monks did everything they could to save the cub but, sadly, a few months later it died. But word had got around about this monastery, and soon tigers were being brought to them from all over Thailand. The monks, acting compassionately as Lord Buddha would expect from his followers, raised and looked after the cats and even started to breed them, as they continue to now. There are also other animals here - cattle, for example, donated by locals who couldn't look after them any more and from which the monks now get the best part of their milk. There's even a family of boar here - apparently one night a large male boar turned up and the monks fed him out of kindness. Within a few days he'd moved in
his entire family. They're still there now, trotting about, snuffling in the mud, and with aggressive charges thoroughly scaring the shit out of the serene, cud-chewing cows.
Speaking of breeding programs, we meet two of the latest results of this endeavour in the shape of two adorable cubs. The size of an average dog, one dozes on the lap of a Buddhist monk while the other plays with a plastic water bottle. Utterly engrossed in play, we are able to sit with it and stroke its tummy. I even grab a handful of the loose skin on the scruff of its neck. It is obviously having a great time with the bottle and is not in the slightest bit threatening, but I can't help noticing that even at this early, cuddly stage, its paws are almost the size of my hand and it is very powerfully built.
We move off and have a look around the rest of the temple, receiving blessings from a monk (and Maya is presented with a tiger tooth pendant, put on her by a nearby tourist as the monk is forbidden to touch women) before being minibussed back to Blue Star. We venture
out to Ali Bongo's, an expensive Indian restaurant almost opposite our place, where we have a really delicious curry served by a lovely, shy Thai girl who giggles a lot and constantly apologises for almost everything. Outside, another storm is breaking. Enormous, mile-high thunderheads are illuminated momentarily with flashes of electric pink lightning, and the rain comes down so heavily it bounces six inches back into the air when it hits the road.
We walk back to our room, noting giant brown cockroaches who peek out at us from the darkened storm drains. These things are fully three inches long and, occasionally, launch into an erratic, swaying flight before hitting a streetlamp or illuminated wall with a resounding 'thwack' and dropping to the floor below, dazed. A foot-long powerful tokay gecko, like the one we saw yesterday, would snap these up, but for now the only geckos we see are the small green ones who scale the restaurant walls, eat mosquitos and who have no hope of taking on a large roach. At the hut, suspended above shimmering green leaves and water that gleams ripples in the inky blackness, we are re-introduced to the croaking mantra of the amphibious
choir and we jump into bed. I manage to pull the whole mosquito net down on top of us as I fall asleep, evoking dark dreams of giant spiderwebs and causing a slight panic, before Maya painstakingly extricates me and hangs the thing back up again. I sleep on, blissfully ignorant.
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