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31 October
Bangkok
Kim: I walked with a Tiger! I patted a tiger! (well we both did .. and I just wanted to share that first). Mark has the story of the day below..
Mark: 06:00. Alarm screams at us to get up because we're going to the Floating Markets, River Kwai Bridge & Tiger Temple today. Our bags were packed the night before as we're moving out of Koh San Palace and back to Shambara Guesthouse. We've discovered that our room in KSP adjoins a nightclub on 2 fronts. But not just your ordinary club… I'm talking badass karaoke singing / sing-a-long, where the entire club shouts and sceams the most retarded war-cries and made-up-on-the-moment songs!! It was like the club is in your room. Club closing time??? 2am!!
Dropped bags off at Shambara and then jumped into mini-taxi headed for the Floating Markets. Our tour included a free hours 'paddy boat' ride, which is a tour around the markets in an authentic Thai paddle boat. It was a glimpse at how Bangkok used to be and how transport & trade was conducted before the 20th century really took over. We spent a further hour here browsing the markets on the sides of the river and taking photos of all the hustle and bustle.
Bundled back into our minibus we headed off for the history part of the tour - Bridge over the River Kwai. In WWII the Japanese wanted to build a railway (aka The Death Railway) that connected a 415km railway from Thailand to Burma. A POW camp was setup in Kanchanaburi which imprisoned about 60,000 Allied soldiers and a further 200,000 Asian labourers to work on the line. The POW Allies completed building the bridge and about 9miles of railway line, before the allied air force came and blew up the bridge. The Jap's actually chained hundreds of POW's to the bridge in the hope of deterring the bridge from being bombed… Clearly this didn't work as 16k Allied troops and 100k Asians died by the time it was completed.
After this we grazed some lunch and then went off to Tiger Temple which is a monastery and has since become an animal sanctuary as well, home to lots of different species of animal. Including wild boars, antelope, water buffalo, wild horses and cattle and of course tigers! It all started when a sick wild boar stumbled into the monastery and the monks helped it get better and released it back into the wild. 10 days later the boar returned with the rest of his family and they've been there ever since. Then some horses, antelope, peacocks etc found their way to the monastery and took up residence. Later a pair of 2 week old tiger cubs whose mother had been killed for poaching were brought to the monastery, and raised by the monks. Unfortunately they died but then 4 male & 4 female orphaned cubs were brought to the monastery and the family has grown ever since. All tigers have been hand raised in captivity so are very at ease with human contact so Kim and I were able to get VERY close to the tigers and even stroke and pet them. Some of the tigers are huge and one 4 year old weighs 200kg!! When we were walking with them back to their enclosure the one male marked a tree and an Aussie next to me got pissed on!! Hahaha - who knew tigers could shoot pee about 3 meters!
It was a loooong day and when we got back to Khao San Road we plonked ourselves down in front row seats of a bar and drank beer, watching the chaos and fun of the Thai Halloween taking place in KS Rd!
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