A Series of Unfortunate Events (but with a happy ending!)

---

One of the things you learn when travelling is that despite all the best planning in the world, your day will never turn out quite as you predicted. Today was going to be just such a day for us...

We had a rude awakening to start the day as Glynn forgot to shut off the alarm clock last night when we got back from our most recent drinking session. I crawled slowly our of bed cursing the sunshine like a newly converted vampire. A shower sorted me out and before long, we were zooming off in search of adventure on our moped once again.

Our German friends had been to see a so-called Dragon Temple so we decided to try and find it too. Easier said than done, especially if you have no map, forgot to get your friends to draw you a map and don't know the actual name of the temple in English or Thai! Still, we had a vague idea which direction to go but after an hour or so we found nothing but dead ends and decided to give it up as a bad idea before we got ourselves completely lost.

Instead we thought we'd try being adventurous by picking a random road and seeing where it would take us as that had worked so well yesterday. We rode around for about 20 minutes until we approached a junction when the bike skidded suddenly to a halt. Here we were in the middle of nowhere with a flat tyre of all things! Before we even had time to consider how to get out of this predicament, a massive 4x4 car pulled up alongside us. Inside was a heavily tattooed Dutch man who kindly offered to help drive us to the nearest garage. The next thing we knew, he had volunteered his tiny Thai wife to push the crippled machine to the garage for us and we were in the back of the car. 300 metres up the road we found a small mechanic's workshop and waited for the poor Thai lady to arrive. Then she negociated the price for us and off they drove into the sunshine.

While we waited for the mechanic to work his magic, we attempted to chat to a friendly Thai man who happened to be deaf. Needless to say, we didn't have much luck. After just 20 minutes, the bike was fixed - turned out the innertube had blown a hole where it had previously been patched up. The new innertube and mechanic's time cost us an incredible 90 Baht- that's about one pound fifty!!! We pointed the bike in the direction we had been heading and drove off feeling immensely relieved at our good fortunte. Alas it wasn't long before we hit rain so Glynn turned the bike around and we did our level best to outrun the impending downpour.

As if that wasn't enough adventure for one day, we had booked ourselves a tour to the famous Tiger Temple. The air-conditioned bus turned out to be one of those converted pick-up trucks and we bundled ourselves in the back with some miserable-looking Polish or Russian guys and a Scandinavian family that chose to ignore us. Driving along the dual carriageway, we noticed something fall off the truck. Seconds later, the driver was reversing down the hard shoulder aginst the flow of traffic in order to retrieve the windscreen wiper that had fallen off! The next interesting event was when we were stopped by the traffic police. We were all a bit concerned at first but then noticed all traffic had been stopped in both directions. We caught the rumour that the Prince of Bhutan was on his way to Kanchanaburi so we all lined the roadside, cameras at the ready. A few minutes later a police car hurtled past, all lights flashing, closely followed by a minivan with darkened windows doing at leadt 100 miles an hour - not conducive for taking photos unfortunately.

45 minutes later we arrived at the temple after driving past field after field of marijuana plants. We paid our 300 Baht entrance fee and tried to contain our excitement at what was going to be the opportunity of a lifetime - the chance to touch a real life tiger! The brochure said not to wear red but it turned out you shouldn't wear yellow, orange or pink either. glynn had a yellow top on so he had to borrow a white shirt from the temple that didn't quite fit. It made him look just like a doctor - I was very proud!

Inside the temple grounds we saw deer and cows wandering around and even saw a family of pigs wallowing happily in the mud. The path led us to a canyon which looked like part of an old quarry - this is where the tigers are. When we got to the bottom we were amazed to see not just one or two tigers but at least 10 of the lovely creatures. They were in a sectioned off area and had big chains around their necks that were secured firmly to a concrete base. We had to go in separately as the guides follow a strict procedure. You give your camera to one guide who takes your photos and you give your hand to a second guide who steers you safely around the tigers. When I met my first tiger, he was lying half asleep on his belly The guide took my hand and put it on the tiger's back and told me to stroke it. I was mesmerised by what was happening and couldn't quite take it all in. Then, after a couple of photos, I got taken to another tiger for more petting, then to a pair of tigers lying on their sides as if trained to do so and I got to rub both their bellies! Lastly, I got to meet another tiger and stroke him. Glynn's experience was the same as mine but in a different order. When we came out of the enclosure, we were both almost speechless at what had just happened.

While we stood and watched other people going inside, I suddenly realised I had lost Jish. Stupidly, I had been carrying him in my pocket but he had fallen out unnoticed. Glynn and I frantically retraced our footsteps but couldn't find him anywhere. We went back down to the tigers to see if he'd been found there but just as we arrived, they started taking the tigers out of the enclsure and back to their cages for feeding. That meant we couldn't look around for Jish. At any other time, seeing the tigers being led away placidly one by one would have been an awesome sight but my mind was on poor lost Jish.

When the tigers had left, we walked to the top of the canyon with the monk who had started off the tradition of taking in orphaned cubs and raising them, accompanied by the eldest of the tigers - it was so cool! I started to realise that we weren't going to find Jish as we didn't have much time left before we had to leave. In a last, desperate effort, I decided to ask around all the other tourists just incase someone had found him but no-one had. Just as I was about to give up completely, one last group of Isreali girls walked through the gate so I ran over to ask them. One girl said she had seen Jish! She went over to another Isreali girl whom I had already asked and a second later Jish was being thrust into my hands! I was so happy to see him that it didn't occur to me that the girl who had found him had lied about it. To think that our friend was nearly Jish-napped! I cried happy tears all the way back to the hotel.

Later that night we met up with our German drinking buddies again and celebrated Jish's return with several more beers and a few games of piss-poor pool. So for a day that could have gone badly wrong, it seems lady luck was smiling on us after all :-)

---