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After weighing up all the options we decided to go to
Kanchanaburi with the same guy who drove us to Damnoen Saduak, so we could
take as much or as little time as we wanted.
The first place we visited when we arrived was
Kanchanaburi War Cemetery. This cemetery contains the graves of 6,982
allied soldiers. This was quite an emotional experience as you initially
read that over 15,000 allied soldiers and 100,000 civilians died
constructing the Thai/Burma railway. The ages of these soldiers ranged
from 49 through to as young as Private RD Coleman, who died on 26 August
1943 at the age of just 18 years old. Many graves just have the words,
"Known to God" on them, some have photos that relatives have placed on
them, all should be honoured and remembered.
From the cemetery we walked along the Bridge over the
River Kwai, before catching the train over it and along the Death Railway
to Tham Kae Sae. The two rectangular sections are the bits that were
bombed and then replaced after the war.
As we sat on the train we noticed that we were the
focus of some older teenage Thais' attention! One guy tried subtly to
stand next to Angela and get his mate to take a photo, but eventually one
of the girls plucked up the courage to ask Angela if they could have a
photo with her! We guess they were probably Muslim as they were covered
head to foot and from southern Thailand and that is probably why they were
so fascinated by what Angela, in particular, was wearing. After their
initial embarrassment they then proceeded to try and chat to us, stare
even more openly at us and ask many questions about where we were from,
etc, etc.
When we arrived at Tham Kha Sae the train slows
significantly as it edges along the wooden railway bridge that hugs the
mountainside round to the station. This is known as the Death Railway
simply because of the amount of soldiers who lost their lives building it,
particular this section, but Hellfire Pass, a land-cut section, was where
the most lives were claimed.
From the station we went to Wat Pa Luangta Bua
Yannasampanno Forest Monastery where the world renowned Tiger Temple
is, established in 1994.
Its reputation as an animal sanctuary is said to have
started when an injured wild fowl was given to the monks by the
villagers. Soon after peacocks turned up, then the monks looked after an
injured wild boar until he could be released back into the forest. The
next day he came back followed by his family group of about ten more
boars. Villagers then started to bring in unwanted pets, such
as: deer, buffalo, cows, horses, goats and gibbons. All of these
animals roam the grounds of the monastery freely.
The first tiger cub was brought to the monastery in
February 1999. When she was only a few months old her mother was killed
by poachers near the Thai-Burma border. The cub was sold and the new
owner wanted to have her stuffed! I wish I could meet him and shake him
warmly by the throat! Some local "use your own expletive here" basically
botched it up and although he injected her with the preservative formalin,
the cub survived. I won't go into details, but she had been basically
butchered by this "taxidermist." In July 1999, despite recovering and
being cared for by the monks, she became very ill and died.
Near this monastery are large "protected" areas and
national parks, stretching along the Thai-Burma border, where it is
believed they have the largest surviving population of tigers in
Thailand. Unfortunately, while these areas are protected poaching still
occurs. A Thai poacher can get up to US$6,000 for killing a tiger, which
equates to several years' salary for a farmer.
Just a few weeks after the first cub died, two healthy
male cubs, intercepted from poachers, were brought to the monastery. They
were just one week old. A few months later the local villagers brought
another two male cubs and soon after the border police intercepted cubs
held by poachers and brought four female cubs.
The Abbot, Phra Acharn Chan, welcomed the animals and
so the monks ended up looking after the orphaned cubs. None of them had
any training in how to handle tigers, they simply had to learn on the
job. The monastery became a sanctuary and it upholds the sanctity of
compassion and kindness to all living creatures.
They are currently building a new complex where the
cubs can be raised as "wild" and then released back into the jungle. The
older tigers are now too dependant on the monks and are practically
vegetarian! However, this new complex will help the monks achieve their
ultimate goal of releasing wild tigers! Come on!
From the Tiger Temple we went back to Kanchanaburi to
visit the "JEATH" Museum, which stands for Japan, England, Australia,
Thailand and Holland and basically shows you the horrors of the war and
the building of the Death Railway. Again, this was quite an emotional
walk around the photos and articles about the atrocities that occurred.
The last thing we did was to take a long-tailed
speedboat from the museum up to the Bridge itself. We saw the Thai people
getting ready for the New Year celebrations, Children playing in the river
and many interesting buildings along the river banks. This was a great
way to end the day as you see the full length of the bridge.
Thanks to Angela watching the train at Tham Kae Sae, I
managed to get what I think is one of the best photos I have ever taken.
Check out the photo of the monk.
ADDED ON 16 JULY 2008
The following is an extract
from a blog written by a good friend of our Bestman, who is a Lodge
Manager at Madikwe in North-West South Africa, where we went for the last
few days of our World Tour. It certainly puts a different slant on
what we as "tourists" saw.
I have added this as I have
absolute faith in the person who wrote this based on how I saw their game
reserve managed and do not want my diary entry to further this venture.
This is my report on my (brief) stay at the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi
in Thailand:
“The Abbot, Phra Acharn Chan, kindly welcomed the animals. And so the
monks ended up looking after the orphaned cubs. None of them had any
training in how to handle tigers. They had to learn on the job. The
monastery did its duty. It became a sanctuary and it upholds the sanctity
of compassion and kindness to all living creatures.”
I applied to volunteer at the Tiger Temple because I wanted to be a part
of the promised “tigers roaming free with Buddhist monks” experience –
having an interest in both wild animals (especially the big cats, of which
tigers are really the only species I don’t have access to in SA) and
Buddhism.
Although I understood that there was probably an element of “marketing
speak” due to the fund raising slant in the promotion of the Temple and
the mysticism of the whole experience, I thought that, due to my research
on the Temple website and other pages and blogs, my expectations were
realistic in terms of how these animals lived and were treated.
The animal cruelty and abuse at the Temple was blatant and obvious to me
from the minute I arrived. (The first animal I came across was at the
Volunteer’s House, a very distressed young female cat who was engorged and
in agony with too much milk. Her five 2 week old kittens had been removed
from her by Temple staff and – we were told - taken to a “Cat Temple”.
I was surprised and upset to come across an animal in such distress as
this was not how I would imagine a sanctuary would treat any animal). I
arrived mid-morning and on my first day one of the other volunteers who’d
been there for a couple of weeks took me around to show me the captive
animals. (There is also a large number of farm type animals – goats, cows,
horses, chickens - and water buffalo, deer, wild boar and peacocks roaming
around the Temple grounds.)
The first cage I came across was a large “chicken wire” cage under a tree
with a hawk in it. The bird apparently had a broken wing. It is never
released from the cage, which is strewn with rubbish (plastic wrappers and
spoons) with flies all over it. Then there was a row of concrete cages
with single adult tigers, one with the baby tigers, and at the end of the
row (with a large generator placed in front of it so one couldn’t really
see what was in this dark, dingy dungeon) a leopard who has, apparently,
not been let out of the cage since she arrived there 8 years ago.
My next visit was to a large, double sized concrete cage almost out of
view of all the other cages, where they keep two very young (I would
estimate them to be about 6 months old) lion cubs (male and female). The
cage is bare but for a concrete bowl of water. There is nowhere for them
to shelter or hide (they are clearly terrified of humans) and certainly
nothing for them to play with – no tyres or branches or any sort of toys.
We then saw all the other tigers – either on their own or with two in a
cage. Some of the tigers are never released from their concrete cages.
But others, on average 8 tigers a day (usually the same better behaved and
better looking tigers – not the stroppy ones or those with scars or bloody
eyes) are taken into the Canyon to be photographed with tourists. This
“outing” liberates them from their cages for a 10 minute walk on stony
gravel to the Canyon, three hours chained by the neck to a ring in the
blazing sun, and a 10 minute walk back “home” to their cages. On their way
to and from the canyon the tigers are encouraged to move by being lifted
by the base of the tail, shoved and punched.
One “tiger girl” would always walk next to the tiger with a garden hoe in
her hand, this she waved in front of the tiger’s face or banged on the
ground next to it whenever it slowed down or stopped. (The threat was
implicit, but the tiger was motivated to move whenever it saw that hoe.)
Whilst in the Canyon, the tigers are disciplined with Tiger Balm being
rubbed onto their faces, tiger urine being sprayed into their mouths and
(surreptitiously, but in full view of tourists) being punched quickly on
the face and head. As to whether the animals are drugged or not, I cannot
be sure. (Although sedation would surely be the kindest way of helping
them get through those long hot hours in the canyon.) The argument against
drugging is the expense and, I believe, the difficulty of dosage
(meticulously worked out amount of drug to body weight) – although local
herbs mixed in with their boiled chicken could possibly work.
(Some of them were completely unresponsive all the time, even when we
visited their cages in the early mornings or in the evenings, and this
could possibly imply properly prescribed drugs.) In the Canyon the
volunteers are there essentially for crowd control. I felt ashamed at
being apparently complicit in the running of this circus - which is really
no more than a money making scam where tourists are required to “donate”
B300 to come into a Buddhist Temple (illegal to charge, by the way), and
another B1000 for a ‘special’ photo with a tigers head placed in your lap.
This place is operated along the lines of a very badly run zoo with no
money - not an animal sanctuary which receives all this money (work it
out, an average of 400 people a day – and that’s on a slow day – with,
say, very conservatively 50 people paying for photos) from tourists. Much
of the money received over the years since the Animal Planet programme has
been promoting it (since about 2003, I think) appears to have been (very
recently, as in it has just started being built) spent on building a
"Buddhist Park Project" which will essentially be an area to accommodate
the followers of the Abbot's Teacher when he comes to visit the Temple!
The Tiger Island (“for their freedom and return to the forest”) which is
apparently the reason we all throw money at the Temple is not yet
complete, but seems to be nothing more that an area for tiger cages with a
moat built around it so tourists can't actually get at them and see how
they live – they will still operate the Canyon Photo Circus and, as they
will still be hand reared, there is no plan to release tigers back into
the wild (despite what it says on their website: “Grown cubs are to
eventually be sent to forest areas, monitored and prepared for readiness
prior to their release back to the forest.”)
Although we could wander around the cages at any time and watch the
workers with the tigers, volunteers were now prevented from ever actually
being with the tigers (no cleaning of cages, no bathing of babies) and I
was only ever really in the same position as the tourists and never able
to see how the staff treated the animals when there were no tourists
watching them – but I feel that the way the tigers cringed away from
chains, lengths of hose pipe, the garden hoe and some of the male staff
members, that there was certainly discipline metered out behind ‘closed
doors’.
When we did wander around the grounds – three female volunteers – visiting
the cages and photographing the animals, we were watched at all times by
the monks and senior staff who communicated on two way radios with one
another.
Some odd things happened with the animals – we came across wild boars
being captured by staff and the cages being loaded onto the back of a
truck: we were told that they were being taken to be released at a
National Park. Also, four adult tigers literally disappeared from their
cages and the temple grounds overnight over a three week period. No
explanation was given as to what had happened to them. Coincidentally, the
four new cubs have been given the exact same names as those who have
disappeared.
In the morning the baby tigers are brought to the temple where we have
breakfast and are allowed to roam around with the monks, staff and
volunteers. Every time a cub came anywhere near one of the volunteers, a
staff member would yank it away, the babies (four of them are really
little, 2 months old and one quite boisterous 5 month old – he was tied to
a pillar) were pulled around by one leg or held back by the tail, slapped
so they skidded across the wooden floor boards, thrown up into the air,
their faces held and noses punched, pinched and flicked, they were
continuously mauled, teased and tormented.
I have to admit that I couldn’t stand it for very long and stay lasted a
mere 4 days! There is a flagrant lack of respect and compassion and
certainly no love for these tigers. And this lack of feeling clearly gets
worse as the animals get older and bigger and stronger.
Essentially, the animal welfare laws in South East Asia are not stringent
enough to close down this establishment due to the cruelty and abuse that
is metered out there (along with the illegal breeding - one tigress is
kept with the sole purpose of producing cubs - which are removed from her
almost immediately after birth and reared by humans). All we can do in the
short term is spread the word to stop tourists from supporting this place. |