TARGET 090513 Tiger Temple Thailand

There aren’t many places in the world where you can touch a fully-grown tiger, but the monks at Thailand’s Tiger Temple allow you to get up close and personal with their domesticated brood of big cats Just a couple of hours’ drive outside Bangkok in the Kanchanaburi province, not far from the world famous Bridge Over The River Kwai, lies the Tiger Temple of Thailand, formally known as Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno. Since 1999, the monks here have taken care of tigers which have been rescued from poachers in the nearby Thai-Burmese border jungle – and to date they have 17 fully grown tigers and tiger cubs living within the temple grounds.

Every afternoon, the tigers are let out of their cages and taken down to a quarry which has a natural pool for them to bathe and play in.Visitors can walk down into the quarry and see the tigers from only a few feet away – there’s a single rope between you and them.

Most of the tigers simply sit stretched out in the sun – they are nocturnal creatures so they laze around during the day. Some of the younger tigers are pretty frisky – on occasions you can see thembusy playing in the pond – “playing” in this case meaning “whacking each other in the face with their paws”. Presiding over the tigers is the Abbot Phra Acharn Phoosit Khantidharo and a bunch of volunteers. The volunteers are mainly Thai but there’s also a couple of westerners too, who grab hold of the tigers’ collars if they start moving towards the boundary rope. There’s a reason that the collective noun for tigers is an "ambush" (like a "pride" of lions, etc.)

Touching A Tiger:

The monks behave with well-deserved respect to the tigers, and they also take visitors in one by one to have their photo taken with a tiger.

The Abott will sometimes intervene and get the tiger to rest its head in the lap of the visitor waiting for their photo to be taken – an unforgettable experience. The monks have big plans for extending their sanctuary, with the ultimate aim of providing an area where the tigers can live naturally pretty much all the time, rather than having to be locked up in cages. A booklet explaining these ambitious plans is provided on entry. While the tigers are the stars of the temple, there are numerous other animals also wandering the grounds, such as boar and goats, and the monks care for these creatures as well.

Feedback Map

If you gained information in your session which was not covered in the feedback, please take a look at this site: More info for the Tiger Temple Many thanks to Ray McClure for suggesting and programming this target.