When deciding what we wanted to do in Thailand, we found a Tiger Temple and Elephant Camp tour on Trip Advisor. The company’s name is Tour with Tong and it had excellent reviews. We did the VIP tour which gave us a personal tour in English, transportation to and from each facility, lunch, access to the tigers, an elephant bath and ride, and unlimited photos from the staff.
Our tour guide, Jay, and the driver picked us up from our hotel at 4:30 in the morning. The Tiger Temple was about 3 hours away from where we were staying and it really helped having someone who knew where they were going. We made a short stop at The Bridge at River Kwai, which is part of a 258 mile long railway known as the “death railway.” It was a railway built by allied prisoners of war during WWII and was used to connect Thailand to Myanmar (Burma). The project was intended to take several years but it actually only took them 17 months to complete it because of the amount of prisoners and Asian civilian laborers working on it. It gets the name death railway because 12,621 allied prisoners which included 133 americans died in the construction.
Before we could play with the tigers, we served the monks their breakfast. When visiting the Tiger Temple and serving the monks you are instructed to wear long pants or a skirt/shorts that come below the knee. You are also supposed to take off your shoes and hats whenever entering the temple.
After we fed the monks, we had the opportunity to feed the tigers!
Next, it was time to walk them!
Then, we gave them a bath!
After we finished bathing and feeding them, it was time to play! This was the most terrifying thing we did all day. We entered the play pen with about 10 unchained tigers and held a stick with a noisy bag that they would chase around. They really are giant cats!
After playing for awhile, we walked a 2 year old tiger back to his play pen.
I know what you’re thinking…that tiger is HUGE! How is he only two?! Well, he is in fact only two years old and will continue to grow until he’s four!!
This ended our time with the tigers. After saying goodbye, our tour guide took us to get lunch before playing with the elephants. Taylor ordered chicken fried rice and pork sate. I had fried thai noodles!
The elephant was playful and would try and splash us with water!
After the elephant was done playing in the water, we rode him back to his play area. Then we changed into dry clothes and drove back to our hotel where we would freshen up and head out for dinner and go shopping at the market. We went to Pizza and The City to get pizzas! Taylor saw that it was listed on the top 10 places to eat in Bangkok and it was phenomenal! We split a margarita and four cheese pizza and we both agree that it was some of the best pizza we’ve had.
Today was an amazing day that we will never forget!
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