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Published: July 25th 2008
Hi!
An overnight bus and we've arrived in Kanchanaburi, home to the infamous "Bridge over the River Kwai" and the Thailand-Burma Death Railway.....A place with lots of history. It is also conveniently close to the controversial "Tiger Temple" (just what it says on the tin....a temple and lots of tigers!) so we obviously had to take a trip there to see what it was all about.....
Dan - I know I was banging on about Tigers and Zoo's etc on a previous blog, however visiting this Tiger sanctuary was different as you can get up close and personal to these creatures as the pics will show. But know this, these Tigers are real and no matter how tame they now are they are still BEASTS so anything is possible. There is alot of controversy surrounding this place..... The offcial side being that these are rescued & orphaned Tigers which are looked after by the Monks that run it........All the proceeds are going towards developing a 240,000 acre reserve from which eventually they will be released back into the wild..............Now the other side.....They say this is an undercover 'ILLEGAL' tiger trafficing racket....!!!! in which Tigers are bred for their body
parts and sold on the black market. We're still undecided but if it is a cover-up, it's quite a good one.
Is was a very surreal expirience as I got the feeling all it would take is for me to pat it the wrong way and bam!! Tiger food!!! We even had to sign an agreement before we went in to waiver any rights incase we were savaged.!!!!! eeekkkkk
We got to play with the cubs and Nic got to feed one.......even a 5 month old Tiger was hard work to control so if one of the big one's got agitated then i dread to think what could happen.
Nic - It was amazing to be so close to such rare beasts and a real eye-opener to see their size at such close range.....the paws alone were enough to make you think twice about what you were dealing with! We caught the public bus to the temple which cost a little more than expected, so the crafty (or maybe that should be stingy!) side of me managed to flag a lift home with a tour group of Aussies!....where there's a will there's a way...Hitch-hiking in true back-packer style
and another string to add to the bow!!!!!
We visited the "Death Railway' Musesum which was quite shocking. Interesting to find out some of the awful facts and figures aout the way the POW were drafted in to build this railway, linking Thailand and Burma, for the Japanese during WWII.....at a time when Dan's own Grandfather was serving in Burma....this made us a little more interested to see what he narrowly avoided and which many of his fellow conrades were unfortunate enough to fall into. The way they were treated and the number of men that withered from this feat of engineering is truely astonishing, but you're spared, we wont give you a history lesson!! Accross the road from the museum is the allied soldiers cemetary which brings home how many soldiers saw there end here.....a very sad place.
And so it was on to the bridge itself....it'd be rude not to! Nothing particullary exciting at first glance until you know the trauma behind it and the fact that it was successfully bombed in the war....the damage to the main pillars are still visible!!
So enough of the boring facts, enough of history for one day (it
never was a strong point for either of us!!) We're back in Bangkok now, waiting for our flight to 'nam' this afternoon.
Back soon.
xxxxx
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Katie
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