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After I left the quaint but grubby little town of Ao Phang Nga, I headed to Khao Lak, where it was my intention to do some scuba diving in the Similan islands. However, the weather was a little too bad for the boat to make it out to the islands and after 3 days in a row I gave up. The storms caused the water to be extremely choppy; the waves rising as high as three meters and slamming into the boat with such a bang, it felt like the boat would certainly split. So, we had to turn around and I instead I sadly headed to Bangkok.
Bangkok is really crazy. The maps of the city I had were all crap and the city is huge! The traffic is also really bad so it takes a while to get anywhere. I explored the typical back packer area, Kho San Road and Soi Rambuttri. Lots of great shopping and bars, clubs, etc. I wasn’t up to traipsing all over the place, but instead just ambled around the city.
After a few days of walking around Bangkok, I decided to take a couple of day trips to the surrounding areas.
The Autthaya Wat and Temple tour- Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand before Bangkok and remained the capital for the longest duration to date- 417 years. That’s about twice as long as Bangkok has now been capital. The city boasts many Wats and holy sites. During the period when Ayutthaya was the capital, 33 Thai kings of different dynasties ruled the kingdom prosperously until it was attacked by the Burmese in 1767. During the war with Burma, the Burmese army destroyed much of the capital. Ayutthaya's art treasures, the libraries containing its literature, and the archives housing its historic records were almost totally destroyed and the city was left in ruins. Even the temples were not spared. The Buddha statues were destroyed; arms and heads cut off and discarded. Although the Burmese are Buddhist as well, apparently they did not consider the desecration of these holy sites a transgression. All that remains of the old city are some impressive ruins of the royal palace, and a few temples in near ruins. The city is still beautiful and when you walk around the various sites, you can picture how amazing it must have been before the war. One of the more
interesting images was a Buddha head in a fig tree. The head must have been removed from one of the statues near the tree when it was young, for the entire tree has grown so completely around the head it is now immovable. Really a remarkable image.
Near the last temple on the visit was a compound where they had elephants. They offered rides but it didn’t seem like they were treated all that well. Instead, I bought some fruit to feed them. They were so sweet and sniffed the basket with the fruit with their trunks. They were all behind a metal bar, but they got all excited when they saw someone coming with one of the baskets and would reach out to you with their trunks. One mahout (elephant trainer/rider) came out and had his perform. First it played the harmonica, then it did hula hoops on its trunk. After it had gotten bored of him, it wandered over to the hut where you bought the fruit from. The elephant went to the girl behind the counter and wrapped his trunk around her arm, pulling her gently toward him as if to say “I want more fruit!”. It
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Aren't I cute?was so cute.
Kanchanaburi- Kanchanaburi’s main tourist attraction relates to the Bridge over the river Kwai and a museum dedicated to the history of the building of the bridge. I have never seen the movie, but apparently it is not very accurate in the way it depicts the treatment of the prisoners. The story is this:
In 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma from Thailand and conquered it from Britain. To maintain their forces in Burma, the Japanese had to bring supplies and troops to Burma by sea, through the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. This route was vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines, and a different means of transport was needed. The obvious alternative was a railway. The Japanese used POW’s to build the railway, although there were a small number of paid Thai laborers assisting as well. The POW’s were treated horribly, worked literally to death. They weren’t fed much and many of them contracted malaria or cholera from the mosquitos in the forests they were clearing to build the bridge. Needless to say, they weren’t provided adequate medical care although there was a doctor in the camps. This doctor has since published a book
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Kho San Road on his experiences working with the laborers at the camp, explaining his side of the story and providing details about the life of the prisoners. Of course, I forgot his name.
Anyway, the museum is kind of a joke. There are a lot of articles that seemed to have been photocopied out of book or magazines describing the prison camp. Other signs and information were filled with typos and English that was so poorly translated, a lot of it didn’t make sense. However, the most disturbing part was that some of the “facts” about the prison camp actually seemed to be glorifying what the Japanese did. One area had a sign board posted which said something to the effect of “No other nation on Earth save the Land of the Rising Sun could have successfully engineered and built such a bridge in the time and under the constraints affecting the construction”. Another article describing the different methods of torture the Japanese inflicted on the POW’s ended by saying that the Japanese weren’t to be blamed for this cruel and criminal behavior, but rather the prisoner was responsible for his own punishment by breaking some kind of rule, i.e. stealing food
or something like that.
We also visited the cemetery where many of the POW’s were buried. It was so sad to read all the markers. The majority of the graves I saw were for men under 30, mostly under 25. What a waste war is. The families obviously still think of and miss their loved ones because there were fresh flowers and pictures on some of the graves. There are almost 7,000 soldiers buried there.
Last abut definitely not least on the tour, was a stop at Tiger Temple, officially called Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno Forest Monastery. The Temple is run by monks and they utilize part of their space as an animal sanctuary.
From their website:
It started with an injured wild fowl given to the monk by the villagers, then peacocks came attracted by the calls of by then rather large colony of wild fowl. An injured wild boar stumbled in to the monastery and the monks cared for him until he could be released back into the forest. The next day he came back followed by his family group of about 10 animals. By now a countless number of boar find shelter in the monastery. Villagers also started to bring in unwanted pets: four species of deer moved in, followed by buffalo, cow, horses, wild goat and gibbons. All these animals are roaming the grounds of the monastery freely.
The first tiger cub arrived to the monastery in February 1999. It was a female cub of Indochinese subspecies (Tigris corbetti) and her condition was very poor. When she was only a few months old her mother was killed by poachers near the Thai-Burma border. The cub was sold to and the new owner ordered her stuffed. A local was hired to do the job, which fortunately he did not finish. Although he injected her in the neck with the preservative formalin the cub survived. When she arrived to the to the monastery she was frail and terrified of a slightest sound. She still has stitches in the cuts on her head. Her vision was impaired and her teeth were already worn, particularly the fangs, which appeared as if they have been filed down to the gum, blood oozing from the roots. Eating was a difficult task for her - she could hardly move her tongue, chew and swallow her food. In spite of her condition she
has never once attacked anyone. Under loving care of the monks the cub recovered, but in July 1999 she fell seriously ill with heart palpitations and died.
People who knew about the incident did not want to see another cub mistreated again. However it was not to be. The monastery is situated in Kanchanaburi province - an area lying adjacent to Burma. Large protected areas and national parks along the Thai-Burma border are believed to contain the largest surviving populations of tigers in Thailand. Unfortunately, while these areas are protected poaching still occurs. A Thai poacher can get up to US $5,800 for killing a tiger, several years' salary to a farmer. The profit is well worth the risk. And when the mother tiger is killed the cubs are taken as a bonus, or left to fend for themselves in the jungle.
Just a few weeks after the first cub has died two healthy male cubs, intercepted from the poachers, were brought to the monastery. They were tiny - just a week old. A few months later the local villagers presented another two male cubs. And soon after the border police patrol intercepted cubs held by poachers and contributed four
female cubs, achieving tiger harmony.
The Abbot, Phra Acharn Chan, kindly welcomed the animals. And so the monks ended up looking after the orphaned cubs. None of them had any training in how to handle tigers. They had to learn on the job.
The tigers were the best part. You could pet them and sit with them. It was so amazing! They’re huge, but they were so sleepy and gentle. They are active at night but during the day they are fairly docile. Really a once in a lifetime opportunity to be around animals like that. It’s clear the tigers are well cared for. Thy had cubs as well. One of the handlers was taking him back for feeding time and he made a grumpy, scratchy little meow at her. It was no where near a roar, but really cute.
After two busy days of tours, I packed it in and headed to Chiang Mai. Stay tuned for more!
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