On a recent trip to Thailand, we decided to take a road trip from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and back. One thing about driving during trips is that it provides great flexibility in planning and scheduling – which means that you can set up ad-hoc visits to places you initially did not intend to visit.

We had planned to visit Kanchanaburi on the way out of Bangkok and it is a pleasant little town – though infested with tourists as is common all over Thailand. A little research led us to discovering a nice monastery called Wat Pa Luangta Maha Bua. I had seen a documentary on discovery channel about this place and how one of the monk’s came about to possess a tiger cub. Anyhow, after finding that the place was within reasonable distance from Kanchanaburi, we decided to head out there and possible see these magnificent cats in a non-zoo environment.

It was a worthy visit since between 1000-1300 Hrs, the tigers are brought out to an open area and visitors are allowed to get really close to them (with supervision of course). The acts looked well fed and happy having their siesta. Some of these fellers even got up and started moving around when people were near them – some of them even started playing with the keepers there. Pretty nice to see that even these wild beasts have a softer side.

If you get to visit Thailand, this is a good place to go to and donate some $$ to fund this project undertaken by the Wat.

What: Wat Pa Luangta Maha Bua aka. Tiger Temple
Where: Off Kanchanaburi, Thailand
Cost: About 200 THB per person.
How: Best by car, one can arrange day trips from Kanchanaburi town.
Place to stay: VN Guest house – good place, cheap stay and great food.

Related posts:

1. thai know how to brew a cuppa

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 9:51 am and is filed under places, thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.