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Bangkok & the tiger temple!
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After a flight that seemed to last for days, Hannah & I finally arrived in Bangkok (the new airport in case you were wondering) tired but excited about our new adventure.
It normally seems so simple getting out of an airport but not without sleep as we found out after queing for a while at passport control, only to find out that we were in the que for internal flights & that passport control was actually a 5 minute walk away!
After arriving at our hotel (we decided that we needed a reasonable place to stay, in order to ease ourselves into this whole travelling thing gently) we had a well deserved sleep before going out to meet my friends Ben & Nathalie who I haven't seen for almost 10 whole years! Ben now lives in Thailand so knows alot more about where to go (and we didn't go to the Khoa San road) not that night anyway! We went to a bar somewhere quite far away which, although it was a little bit cheesy, was fun & played what sounded like Thai Europop! Very amusing.
The next day we had a tour booked to go to some temples which we were quite excited about. We realised fairly quickly however, that this whole tour thing is really all about what people can make us buy! We did get to see an amazing temple though! When they built these temples, they have paid such attention to detail! They quite literally sparkle in the sunlight. There was a different Buddha in each temple. One seated, that was amazing, one reclining, (that was huge!) and one standing (we weren't allowed in that temple for some reason). Then it was off to a jewelery store. Hmmm. I wonder why?! We also realised on our "tour" that Bangkok traffic is actually worse than London!
The next tour we went on a few days later was alot better. We visited a floating market in the morning (the tour started at 7am which was very harsh!) that was definitely cool! I didn't realise you got traffic jams on rivers though! It was all the same kind of stuff that they sell in Bangkok but it was nice to be out of the city. Very peaceful & we saw some interested things from our longtail boat, such as a monkey & a Python! Arrgh! I didn't know Pythons could swim! (excuse my naivety!)
After the floating market we went to a Cobra show. To be honest, it was quite interesting but given the choice I wouldn't go again as I felt it was a bit cruel to the snakes. Now I'm not trying to pretend that I'm a big snake lover as snakes are DEFINITELY not my favorite animal, in fact I find them really really scary, but I felt that they were a little bit cruel to them. They had a mongoose there too, as they are one of only 2 natural predators that Pythons have & they got the mongoose to attack the snake which I found a bit disturbing.
Anyway, let's get to another nice bit! The Tigers! We visited The Tiger temple at Kanchanaburi & it was absolutely amazing! The sanctuary is run by Buddhist Monks so the animals are well cared for & all seemed very happy.
Most of the animals are allowed to roam freely around the grounds of the temple as they would in the wild, however the tigers need to be kept separately as obviously they would hunt the other animals.
Left aligned photo tag:
We had our pictures taken with the tigers resting their heads on our laps which cost a little bit more but I would definitely
recommend this as it's so amazing to be so close to a tiger! The reason we are able to get so close to these tigers, is because they are handled from when they are babies as the temple acquires them either from the authorities who confiscate them from poachers & don't want the responsibility of looking after them, or from villagers who had found them half starved after poachers had killed their mothers. Either way the tiger cubs would die if they weren't taken to the temple as most people don't have the knowledge or finances to look after a tiger cub! Although it is illegal to kill a Tiger in Thailand, poaching is fairly common as a poacher will receive the same amount of money for 1 tiger as a farmer would earn in a whole year, so although it doesn't make it right, I guess it would be appealing to some people.
The other animals in the sanctuary are also taken there either because they need help because they are injured or they have been abandoned by their owners who can no longer afford to look after them.
After our tiring but amazing day, we embarked on our very hot, 3 hour drive back to Bangkok!
I've still got so much more to write on Thailand even though I've been in Australia for a while now! I promise to get around to it! xxx
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