Tiger Kingdom

While Mom and Dad were off on a tour of the Golden Triangle, we hired a van from Grace’s to take us to Tiger Kingdom. I was initially a bit reluctant to visit an establishment whose name all but said “tourist trap” but it’s not all about me and one must do things to keep the kids amused so off we went. As you can guess, I was pleasantly surprised. They actually let you in the cages with the tigers. Maya got to go in with the baby tigers and Zak and I got to go in with the 5 month adolescents and then also the young adults. There are keepers there to direct you and, assumedly, keep you safe but they were only armed with little thumb-thick dowels about one foot long that didn’t look like they would do much against a full-grown tiger. However, we just figured, “it’s Thailand, so it’s got to be safe.” Besides the tigers looked pretty complacent and I assume they were well fed. Actually, when I would lay my head on the stomach of one of the big cats, I could hear the food being digested. One thing I thought was fascinating was that tigers basically behaved the same as a house cat. We would pet them the same way we stroked our house cats back home. For example, when Zak would rub the belly of “New,” a big male, he rolled on his back and spread his legs to the sun for better access. Pretty cool. When we were at the Chiang Mai Zoo, Zak and Maya each got to feed raw meat to the jaguars off the end of a metal pole and I thought that was pretty cool but this was pretty out of hand. I’ve never been in a cage with a tiger like that and I presumably never will again, especially since, I heard recently, a tourist was mauled there sometime after our visit. Oh well, it was probably just a rumor.