Si Racha Tiger Temple

What a trip. This was a place I went with expectations. I thought it would be beautiful and well-kept and the animals would be in their natural habitats. I thought they would be happy (as happy as is possible in captivity) and nourished. I was very very wrong. This was the craziest, strangest zoo experience I have had thus far. Granted, I have not had too very many zoo experiences, but I usually feel that the animals are at least well-fed. Here, not so much. They looked famished. And sad. And tired. They had lost their shine. It was so unnatural.

They placed tigers with pigs and dogs in a concrete circle with florescent lights beaming down on them. You could (pay to) feed elephants that looked like they hadn't eaten in days. It was most definitely a concrete jungle, and I found it very sad. If we can do better than that in the states, what's the problem Thailand? They are already in their natural environment. All this concrete costs money. What gives? I am not sure the thought process behind it, but I definitely didn't get it, nor did I like it. I took very few pictures because I didn't want to send the message I thought this lifestyle was okay. If they see us photographing and loving on the animals, paying to feed them, they think what they are doing is successful, so they keep doing it.

The strangest thing we saw by far were people in the tiger cages. They were behind glass windows dressed in prehistoric garb with prehistoric tools waiting for people to gawk at them. When we walked up we were so shocked by it and not exactly sure how to respond. I did not pull out my camera because I again didn't want to perpetuate the situation, but I was very tempted to document the oddity.

We soon realized, as a group of Chinese tourists stopped and laughed and took their pictures, that these people were posing inside the glass for money. They would dance around and hold the tigers, and then these tourists put money in a box so they could reach it. Absolutely crazy.

There were many "wild" animals you could pet and take your picture with for extra money in the zoo. It was unbelievably artificial. You sat in a concrete room with a baby tiger in front of a fake jungle backdrop and paid about $5 USD for a photo. If they hadn't filled the place with concrete, then it would have already been in the jungle!

I had a hard time understanding why they chose to run the zoo in this manner, but the people here seemed to like it. Not for me.

We saw a live tiger show and crocodile show, both were equally scary for different reasons. The crocodile tamers didn't seem to have the slightest idea of what they were doing and no real routine. As far as we could see, they were poking around and agitating them then running away. It felt like their days were numbered (they were sticking their heads in their mouths, etc. VERY HARD to watch).

At the tiger show, the whole time they were showing how far and how high they could jump in a cage, but the cage didn't rise too high off the ground. They consistently displayed how easy it would be for any of these animals to escape. How comforting. We sat in the back row and decided if worst came to worst they would eat all the people in the front rows first. KIDDING. Well, sort of..

This was the kind of thing we saw all day. They also put a baby tiger with an adult female pig.

Me holding the baby crocodile. We were sneaky about taking the pictures.

Tiger with bunnies and children's hands. Sounds safe to me.

The scorpion queen. She looked incredibly bored when we walked up, sitting there with all those scorpions doing her makeup. The way she responded to us almost turned the thing into a freakshow. She stood with an incredibly bored and indifferent look on her face and waited for people to give her money to take pictures. We were again shocked by what we were seeing, so we waited for everyone to leave. She then asked if I wanted to try holding it, and at that point I felt okay with it. But still, sooo strange.