Start with a place called Kanchanburi, throw in the river Kwai and add a bunch of TIGERS and see what an interesting day you get!

A tale in which our young heroes... well go and explore through the country side, visit the mountains, see some temples, walk across the river Kwai, chase some waterfalls, oh and spend the afternoon petting tigers...

Hmmm... what could those stripes mean?A view of the bridge over the river Kwai.

Read the rest...
Our final port of call in Thailand was a small city west of Bangkok called Kanchanaburi. The city itself is situated along a peaceful river and has a rather low key feel to it, like if you wanted to go and just do nothing next to the river Kwai... this would be the kind of place you'd come. As a side not the river Kwai has a fascinating history, forced labor, massive deaths, etc... all to build a bridge that was destroyed shortly after its completion. For history buffs its fascinating I'm sure, I kind of just thought it was pretty while also attempting to acknowledge the hundreds of people who died here. Anyway, so we got into Kanchanaburi and decided to rent a moto (a moto is really just a moped but that's what they call it here and I like it, mostly because it sounds much less lame that way), which is something that I've been wanting to do for months now.

Me as we walked across the bride. Like I said, kind of interesting but mostly just "pretty."

Our burley moto and a cliff face in the background. (if you look closely I have the same expression in this picture as the one above it...weird)

A temple with a view.

Now this city doesn't have a lot going for it but it is a place many folks find themselves when they grow tired of Bangkok... or because they've heard of the the river Kwai. But its located in the mountains that separate Thailand and Burma, beautiful stuff that we felt obligated to explore (hence the motor bike and my excitement). Along the way there were some great temples, and nice views of karsts but the main reason we came here is because we had heard about a place called the Tiger Temple.

Now, I'm not one of those people that had tiger T-shirts as a kid, or tiger toys, or really much of tiger anything (aside from Tony the Tiger) so the idea of seeing more tigers was interesting but not overly appealing and then I heard a an interesting thing about this temple, you get to pet tigers. I'm still not sure why I found the idea of petting something that God designed to kill me in a bite appealing but it did and ever since I heard about this place I wanted to go... almost in a 7 year old mind set, "I get to pet tigers! Hehe!!"

Us "walking" with the tiger. We were really just standing when the picture was taken as he had just peed.

A tiger cub. This little guy is only about 20 days old. Oddly enough the folks who work with and are the primary handlers of the tigers are all monks, hence the temple part of tiger temple.

So we boarded our newly rented moto(which I'm sure goes faster than your average moped and is much more manly as well) and spent some time driving around the mountains
on our way to the temple. After some seeing the mountains, some great karsts, and an ideally placed monestary or two we arrived at the temple. After that all we had to do was pay, wait while trying to ignore the other tourists there and we finally were able to both walk with a tiger (or really touch it while it walked all the while thinking, "Don't eat me, don't eat me) and pet the tigers as they laid around in the afternoon. It was a very cool experience, though at times it felt a little canned and blown up for tourist hype. Regardless of the unnecessary pomp and circumstance, I can say I've touched a tiger and well.... it felt like touching a big cat. But who am I to complain they are cats after all right?

They sleep alot, although even when it was asleep I thought of how little work it would have to do in order to eat me.

After that we went spent the rest of the day hunting down a waterfall (and found it... despite having to wait out a rainstorm) before finally deciding to return to our guest house for the evening. It wasn't the most amazing day, there were no new deep revelations about life but it was fun to spend a day driving a moto (not a moped) around, seeing the mountains, walking across the river Kwai, chasing waterfalls, and touching tigers.

A picture of the waterfall.

A picture of local boys at the waterfall. They took great joy in attempting to climb it (which never worked) and seeing what small holes they could stick their head into... ahh to be 13 again).

The view of the river Kwai from our guest house.