As my friend, Richard, pointed out, having spent my first weekend at Monkey Mountain and my second at Tiger Temple, it sounds a little like I’ve been playing out the levels of some video game.
(As a side note, this water buffalo, also in the sanctuary (or at least we thought it might be a water buffalo) scared us all a lot more than the tigers did).
And these ones below were just plain weird. I might dub in some audio when I'm feeling more creative. :P
Tiger Temple is an animal sanctuary in Kanchanaburi that came to be when an orphaned tiger cub was dropped off by villagers at a monastery to be raised by a group of monks. Word quickly spread that this was a good place to take animals whose mothers had been killed by poachers, etc. The idea is similar to an animal refuge centre, except that the main people caring for the animals are the Buddhist monks.
I was initially skeptical about any place that kept tigers on display for the entertainment and viewing of humans. Through reading up on the sanctuary, however, I learned that the two hours in which the temple is open to the public every day are essential to the funding of this sanctuary. The large cats consume up to 60 lbs of food every day and what better place to get the money for this food than from rich tourists wanting to “see the tigers”.
When the tigers aren’t in the canyon, they’re free to roam about in a section of the sanctuary that is much larger and very similar to their natural habitat.
Reasons why the temple is only open for this small window at a specific time of day:
1. It would be cruel to have them cooped up there any longer, two hours is plenty long to begin with
2. This is the hottest time of day and the felines are more lethargic under these conditions
3. The workers/monks feed the animals just prior to the temple opening meaning they’re both satisfied and sleepy (anyone who has a cat at home that they feed once or twice/day should be quite familiar with this phenomenon. After meal time, my kitty is heavily sedated and pretty much dead to the world for a few hours).
It was almost humorous how structured the event of meeting the tigers was (I suppose one can never really be too careful with such a large carnivore), but I ended up getting some good pictures out of it.
6 comments:
Oh man that is hot shit. I wish I had tiger pictures.
Also, on a completely unrelated note, the lack of commas in your blog title makes it sound like you're heading monkey curry. This is fine with me.
Yeah, I noticed that after I'd already written a couple posts... They won't let you edit the title without starting a new blog unfortunately though. Monkeys curry it is! :)
Did you actually get to touch a tiger? That's awesome!
I've also heard from others that went here that they drug the tigers up quite a bit (above and beyond the post meal lethargy). what do you think?
I was hesitant to go at first for that reason, but from what I've read, and what I observed I think the food/heat lethargy is quite believable. The soi dogs and cats sure don't do anything in Bangkok during the day's hottest point, so it would make sense that Tigers would be the same.
Plus, I just really can't believe that Buddhist monks would go for it if they were drugging the tigers on a daily basis.. That doesn't sound very Buddhist at all. I think the only reason they even go for the tourist thing is because they know it's a good source of income to pay for the place and the food.
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