Hugging the Tigers - Feb 20th, 2010

Hi All,

Yesterday M and I trudged around sweaty sweltering Bangkok and tried to find all the Temples and Buddha's described in the lonely planet guidebook. It was beautiful, but a bit frustrating of a day as Bangkok is not nearly as well labeled as Vietnam, and in some cases, not labeled at all, or labeled in Thai which is completely incomprehensible to us. At least in Vietnam, even if we couldn't translate we could recognize the signs as they use western symbols for the language. Thai is impossible and there are a lot of people very eager to put you in a tuk tuk and take you "around town" (ie. scam and who knows where/if you will end up). So we tried to sort it out on our own - did decently, but it was a long day. We did, however, end the day with another $8 massage which was decent. We tried to find the Wat Pho school of Thai Massage but were unsuccessful so we just went to one near our hotel. Forgot to mention - Thailand drives on the left side of the road, a surprise to me!

Today was amazing. We went on our tiger temple tour where we had quite a long ride out of Bangkok to the north east province of Kochanburi in a private car (didn't know that when we booked, but nice surprise). Great AC! :) Stopped at a few highway bathrooms that were mostly just holes in the wall; Mom wish you could see these bathrooms! Squat and drip-dry then use some hand sanitizer! There were a lot of people at the Tiger Temple, but the guide we were with put us to the front of the line as she goes there every day and knows everyone, we certainly got VIP treatment. Got to walk with the tiger and pet it, then took pics with the tiger's head in my lap, and got to pose with and sit next to a couple of different ones. The we went to a different part where they had cubs - some a few weeks old (didn't get to touch those) and some about 6-8mos old. Took lots of pics with those, and literally laid down next to one like I was spooning him and took pics with our faces next to each other. Amazing. They were hot but still very friendly and just seemed like big domesticated cats, although of course much more powerful and strong. Quite awesome creatures - can't wait to show you all the pics. I have a ton and sorry, but I'm not editing out ANY of these :)

We went on to stop at the side of the road where she knew there were monkeys and we fed them peanuts and water straight out of the water bottle, it was really cute. They are friendly and you can see the expressions on their face. She told us only thing we need to be careful not to tease - if you hold out food, let them take it or they will get angry. Scary!!!

Then we went on to go on an Elephant ride - kind of a circus atmosphere at this place, but the ride was quite long - they had carts tied to the top of the elephant and a local that rode on it's neck as a "driver" but halfway through, he got off the elephant and made me get up on it's head to "drive" and take pics, etc. Then he directed me to step on his head to get back up on the cart and let M drive for a bit. I didn't fall off or drop my shoe!!!

Just had another long ride back to the city - going to have a nice dinner, maybe do some souvenir shopping (any requests??) and then have an early start tomorrow - 8:30am flight to Phuket, where we will immediately take a ferry over to Koh Phi Phi and check in for the final leg of our trip. I was commenting to M today that we've been travelling for 2 weeks now and with everything that has happened to us, it feels like a LOT longer.

A