Here there be tigers

Kanchanaburi, Western Thailand

Whilst in Bangkok we took a day trip to Kanchanaburi, which is mostly famous as the location of the Bridge over the River Kwai. But it is also home to the Tiger Temple. I first heard about this place a few years ago from my friend Sophie when she paid it a visit whilst on her own travels, and I was very eager to go myself. Our intention was to spend a few days in Kanchanaburi and take our time seeing the sights, but because we both seem to be rapidly losing our ability to organize anything, we dithered in Bangkok too long and ended up booking a day trip through a local tour operator. After spending a few hours in a very cramped minibus, we arrived at the War cemetery, which is home to a very small percentage of the hundred and thirty thousand people who died whilst building the 'Death Railway' between Thailand and Burma (Myanmar now) during WWII. From here we went to the bridge itself, which is a rather small, unassuming single track railway bridge over a rather small, unassuming brown river. It in no way conveys the historical significance it attained after the movie was made. From what I can tell, there are a stack of 'Death Railway' museums in the city, ranging from the well stocked and sensitively displayed official exhibits to small, opportunistic, private-enterprises showing a handful of empty shell casings and sticks of bamboo. Around the bridge there were literally thousands of tourists, posing for photos and clambering over rusty steam locomotives. It's hard to conceive that the tens of thousands of POW's and native forced labourers that died during construction ever realised they were creating such a popular and profitable tourist attraction. This was all a rather surreallistic experience, and one in which we were both complicit. Hmmm.

From there we went on to the local 'Elephant Farm', which is where they grow elephants, or something. Our small group were only there to take lunch, but others were staying there the night and going on jungle treks the following day. Quite why somebody thought it would be a good idea to have lunch amid huge mounds of elephant dung and steaming puddles of piss is quite beyond me, but then again I'm stuck in my western ways. Then our delightful driver for the day, a small, ratfaced little whip of a man, politely ushered us back to our transport by clapping his hands at us and shouting 'You get back in car, NOW '. It was at this point that I finally snapped and stuffed him bodily and head first up the nearest elephant's arse. Let me rephrase that. It was at this point that I almost snapped and imagined myself stuffing him bodily and head first up the nearest elephant's arse.
You see, the weaselly(?) git had been doing this all day and once he had finally corralled us all back into the van, which was the exact opposite of what the TARDIS must be like only hotter, he would slam the sliding door shut, then walk off to have a fag and a chat with his mate from another van. Not the sort of thing to settle the moods of a dozen sweaty tourists. Anyway, we all got back in the van, he slammed the door and walked off to have a fag and a chat with his mates. As we were leaving the elephant plantation, an Australian girl observed that she thought it was cruel that the elephant handlers steered the animals by whacking them on the head with a cane. I pointed out that this was probably akin to a squirrel tapping her on the forehead with a small twig, but I don't think she was convinced. We spent the rest of the journey arguing about whether elephants had ankles, and if they had, why did they never sprain them walking down hills like I do in my flip-flops.

The name 'Tiger Temple' is a bit misleading. The temple is not made out of tigers, it is made out of wood, and it is not so much a temple as a small shack with a Buddha statue in it. The tigers are actually kept during the day in a small. Steep sided quarry a little way from the temple. When we first arrived I assumed the tigers would be tethered to something large, heavy and immovable, but no. What they are is completely free to sit on the rocks and chew on enormous bones, letting out the occasional bowel-loosening growl. But this is all perfectly safe because we the visitors are kept securely behind an insurmountable barrier of................Red string !! Fantastic. Nothing between me and the gaping maw of certain death but a length of darning wool.

Actually the tigers, there are about 10 of them, are very placid and pretty much spend the whole day lying around doing nothing more arduous than posing for photos. We were told we could go into the 'Enclosure' to have our photos taken with the cats so, one at a time, in we went and smiled for the cameras. Now I'm a big believer in evolution through natural selection, and I think there is a good reason why it feels just plain wrong to be patting the head of a 7 foot long, 300 lb carnivore. However, that aside it is a fantastic experience and the tigers are incredible. The handlers make you feel completely safe, well maybe not completely, and they are happy to egg you on with helpful suggestions such as 'Sit closer', 'Pat him on the head' and my personal favourite 'Don't put your head near his mouth !' While you're the one sitting with the cats you feel extremely glad that they are so laid back and uninterested in what's going on around them. But to be completely honest with you, there is a small part of you that is morbidly imagining when it's somebody else's turn, that one of the big buggers will just flip out and whip a huge paw across the top of their head. No ? Just me then. This in itself is fairly irrational. As was mentioned earlier, the only difference between them and you is a small piece of string. It's not like the tigers are sitting there thinking 'That fat, pasty, white fella looks tasty, and I'd love to wipe that smug grin off his face. If it wasn't for that pesky string I'd have him in a second.' I always find it curious when I read stories about how a tiger has gone 'crazy' and attacked somebody. In the words of Chris Rock, 'Tigers don't turn crazy. Tigers turn tiger !' Eating things is what tigers are SUPPOSED to do. It's the sitting around getting their photograph taken with yahoos like me that's the unnatural part.

After our first turn with the animals, and the other folks had done the rounds, Cara and I decided we'd have another go. In we went and handed the camera to one of the handlers to take photos. It was this time around that the guy decided he was going to be David Bailey and reel off a few hundred shots from every conceivable angle. Now I don't know how many of you have spent any serious amount of time sat beside a full grown predator crunching on a large femur, but it is fascinating to witness how your confidence in your own safety can diminish rapidly after you've been sat there for an age waiting for Mr Snappy Snaps to take his fiftieth shot of the tigers favoured left profile. We can probably apply Newton's Inverse Square Law although I doubt we'll be reading about it in any science journals soon ! After 10 minutes of that I was itching to get back to the safety of the string perimeter.

We did explore other parts of the temple complex and saw wild boar, deer, peacocks and other assorted fauna but blah blah. It was all a bit of an anticlimax after the tiger experience. I'm glad we went to see it when we did, though. The monks handed out a pamphlet to us while we were there, outlining their plans for building some huge Disneyland for tigers style behemoth. It had a moat, water features and acres of landscaping. Soon you'll be able to buy doughnuts and commemorative T-shirts and catch a glimpse of a tiger off in the distance in it's enormous habitat. Great for the tigers. Bollocks for us flaky westerners who want to throw a couple of quid in the collection plate and get an experience like we had. Oh well. After leaving the tiger temple we did some other stuff, but quite frankly, I can't remember what it was.