Bumming around Bangkok

Reclining Buddha

Meeting an interesting Indian and British guy at breakfast the next day, we followed the directions that they gave us to the Grand Palace. Almost five hours, a stroll through Chinatown, a giant swing, numerous temples and a huge water bottle later, we arrived. What should have taken us less than an hour took almost five with all the wrong turns and detours we made. And it had closed twenty minutes earlier. At least on the way, we had stopped at Wat Pho, a temple famous for its’ reclining Buddha. Ready to be done with Thailand, we impatiently awaited our flight to Yangon, Myanmar.

Chills in Chiang Mai

One of the young tigers

     With our extra time in Bangkok, we decided to take a day trip to Chiang Mai, where the tiger temple is located. This temple, Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno, consists of boars, buffalo, cows, deer and goats. Originally a haven for injured or unwanted animals, it is now a wildlife sanctuary. The first cub, whose mother was killed by poachers, was brought to the monastery in 1999. After the first cub, four more males and four more females we rescued from poachers and given to the monks to raise. These cubs grew and began reproducing, thus creating a tiger “haven.”



    People are allowed to visit between 1:30 and 3:30, when the tigers are napping and resting in the heat of the day. You could also come earlier or stay later and participate in “exercising” the tigers, which seemed a bit scary. We walked around the temple grounds with the only other person in our group, a very friendly Italian guy. We all took turns taking pictures with the tigers, and then Becca began questioning the workers as to why the tigers are so quiet and calm. The woman laughed, and said they get drugging questions all the time. There is only a short period where people are able to touch them, during the heat of the day when tigers sleep. Also, they have been hand-raised and thus desensitized to human touch. As we pet them, all the workers warned us to touch them with a very firm brush, because a light touch would be like a fly or tickling them and they would swat us. Pleased that we came here, we headed back in the van and back to Bangkok.

Back to Bangkok

Wat Pho

Returning to Bangkok to drop off our passports and hopefully get our India visas in one day, we dropped off our stuff and hopped into a cab. Arriving at the embassy we were informed that we could not pick up our passports until Monday. Stuck in Bangkok, we decided to see some of the surrounding city that we had missed before. And onto Chiang Mai we went.