Tigers and Elephants and Wild Boars, Oh My!

Ever ridden an elephant through tropical Thai jungle? Check. Petted a Tiger cared for by Buddhist monks? Check. Stroked a water buffalo as it defecated near your feet, splattering on your legs? Unfortunately, check (could this be Karma? See our airport story). Anyhow, these are just a few of the many things that we were able to scratch off of our list of "things to do before we die." Amazing.

The day began with a tour of the World War II memorial located about 2 hours west of Bangkok. Having seen a number of World War II memorials between the two of us, we were particularly interested in this one because it focused on Japan, not Germany. Apparently, in an attempt to take India in its advance west, the Japanese interned thousands of allied troops to construct a railroad from Thailand, then Siam, to Burma in order to transport the necessary troops and supplies to the Indian border.

Another interesting aspect of the WWII museum (called the JEATH museum--Japanese, English, Australian, Thailand, and Holland . . . no love for the U.S., despite the loss of hundreds of American lives building the railroad) was its placement directly on the River Kwai, apparently a very famous movie about the Japanese' internment of allied troops. Some of you may have seen it; for us, seeing the actual train tracks constructed through the backbreaking labor of 20th century slaves was quite impactful.

From the WWII museum, we moved on to the above-mentioned elephant ride through the Thai jungle. While this may seem extremely cool--it did to us--it actually ended up feeling conflicted; the ride was entertaining but we couldn't tell if the handlers treated the elephants humanely. Some of the elephants appeared to bear traces of continued beating on their foreheads by the elephant riding version of a spur--a large hook-like club that the handlers used to steer the elephants. It wasn't a pretty sight and kind of undermined our enjoyment of the trip. Feeling sorry for the elephants after our short ride, we bought them bananas to feed; they seemed to like that part quite a bit!

After that experience, we moved on to a river rafting adventure down the River Kwai on bamboo rafts. Margaret was again very nervous that things would somehow go horribly wrong and we'd end up floating sideways into a bridge. Well, we did end up floating sideways, but it was all part of the plan. To be fair, though, it did begin violently storming as we had to cross the most rickety and unsturdy suspension bridge we'd ever seen. It truly was straight out of Indiana Jones; we half expected a boulder to come rolling down behind us at any minute. Needless to say, we made it across unscathed.


Finally, and very much most excitingly, we trekked (i.e., rode in an air-conditioned bus) onward to the Tiger Temple, where Buddhist monks have dedicated themselves to tiger preservation and consciousness. We were pretty calm about knowing we were about to pet tigers, thinking that the monks do this all the time and it must be safe, until we bought our tickets. Before we could enter, we all had to sign our lives away--literally. The tickets made very clear that we were about to enter an enclosure with "untamed wild animals" and that the monks were not in any way liable for any harm that may befall us. We overcame our jitters, however; it turned out to be one of the most amazing things either of us had ever done. We each stroked a variety of tigers from very large ones to little kittens. Of course, the pictures we've attached explain our experience better than words ever could. Simply amazing!