I had just left Koh Phi Phi Don (one of the most beautiful places I've ever been), and taken a ferry back to Phuket. Phuket is best known for being a "beach party" type of town with plenty of crazy things happening all around you. There are stores lined with knockoff designer gear, and bars on every corner. Pretty much every bar is a partial strip club with girls dancing on the bar, in front of the patrons.
The night life is another post entirely, and this was intended to be about close encounters with tigers, so let me get to that. When you walk around during the day you pass by these little travel agency style booths that offer to make reservations for you to visit different attractions in the area. We were drawn to a brouchure for a place called "Tiger Kingdom". You basically get to meet and touch what looked like incredibly large tigers in an enviroment that was hopefully controlled.
We took a taxi to Tiger Kingdom before our reservation time which wasnt too far from the beach area hotels (about a 10-15 min drive). We got there and checked in and they gave us a few options for our tiger meet and greet. I could meet small, medium, large, or XL size tigers. There was also a cub you could meet and hold for the same price as the XL size tiger.
We decided large was scary enough, so we made our purchase. It was roughly 2000 baht per person if I remember correctly. Thats around $60 US dollars per peron. We waited our turn, and they called us into the enclosure. The tigers were f#*king huge, and there were like 3 of them laying around (completely free to attack), and one swimming in a pool. The so called "trainers" had these little tiny sticks that they would use to poke the tigers on their rear ends while they were singing to them, calling them from one place to another. The whole thing was hilarious, but really weird honestly.
The tigers seemed so exhausted they didnt even want to open their eyes. They were sleeping when they were sitting up, and walking around with their eyes closed. I realized pretty quickly that these cats were on quaaludes. I felt badly paying my money to fund an operation that was tranquilizing animals for the entertainment of tourists, but I had no way of knowing about it until I was already inside. They told me to lay on the tigers back, bite his foot, pull his tail, anything except touch his face, or whiskers. I wasnt so sure I wanted to do any of those things lol.
They moved me around from tiger to tiger in different areas of the enclosure taking as many pictures as they could in the time we had. It was a nice change from other animal adventure activities I have done in the past that take pictures of you with the animals, and then try to charge you an insane price to purchase the photos. All you had to do at Tiger Kingdom was give one of the tiger handlers your cell phone, and he would take a massive amount of pictures for you to choose from on your own device. All for free!
I was assured by the employees that the cats were nocturnal, and naturally very sleepy during the day, but they were given no drugs of any kind. I dont know what to believe but I had my suspicions that these kitties were more than just "tired".
I guess it was a blessing if these tigers were tranquilized, considering the fact that there was no real safety in this operation, but I dont agree with treating animals this way. It was still an amazing experience despite all of my ethical concerns, and of course I kept all of the amazing pictures. I was on to the next amazing crazy experience that Thailand had to offer, but ill surely never forget that close encounter.
