What To Do In Thailand. Visiting The Tiger Temple? Go On A Elephant Safari?

In case you are thinking about travelling to Thailand, get some sun, eat exotic food, just relax on a beach  and swim in warm water I hope you enjoy every second of it and treat the locals nice. Treat others as you want to be treated yourself. The chance of you being approached by people with animals are also big. They might come up to you with an Eagle, Monkey, Python or an Iguana that you can hold while they take a photo.

But it is now that you have to stop for a minute. 

Have a think about this:

• Almost all are poached from the wild; a complete family of gibbons will be killed just to obtain one baby gibbon.
• The animals suffer greatly – they are often drugged, mistreated and passed from one stranger to stranger all day and until late into the night.
• Most animals can only be used when they are young and therefore are dumped by their owners when they mature.
• Some people, as well as some gibbons, carry diseases that can be transferred from animals to people and vice versa. You can actually get deadly diseases from these animals such as TBC and Hepatitis-B if you kiss and hug them or don’t handle them professionally. Also remember that these people walking around with these animals are no poor people. They can make as much as $200 a night and do not have any interest in the animals welfare at all. These animal are just used for profit and then thrown to the side when they can’t be used any more or die of mistreatment. These malnourished animals don’t think this is fun, on the contrary, they are kept on short chains or confined to tiny cages and receive little or no veterinary care.

So is it worth taking that photo? Knowing that you encourage this animal abuse to continue?

Have you been thinking about visiting The Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi? For a chance to cuddle and pet a beautiful Tiger? It is a very popular tourist destination for travellers from around the world. But, what’s the truth behind the famous ‘tame’ tigers? In 2008, Care for the Wild International released an undercover report called ‘Exploiting the Tiger’. The temple heads have always claimed that the tigers kept there have been rescued from poachers, are housed the best possible way and are so docile because of the good care and peaceful surrounding of the temple. The result of that report was a sad story. It showed:

• Illegal tiger trafficking.
• Systematic physical abuse of the tigers.
• High risk interactions between tigers and tourists.

In 2013 they went back to see if things had changed. It hadn’t. There are reports of:

• Man-handling
• Lack of consideration for the needs of the tigers
• Over exposure to hands-on tourists
• There is a lack of training and emergency equipment
• There are over 100 tigers… not 17 as quoted on their site
• The Tiger Temple is actually licensed as a zoo in Thailand 

The temple houses the animals in very poor conditions. Staff harass the animals with beatings and spray urine into their faces as a crude method of control. The tigers are released from cramped cages only when tourists pay to have their picture taken with the animals. CWI also discovered that the temple has been involved in illegally trading their older tigers to a tiger farm in Laos. And Tiger farms as you might know are where they torture Tigers and slaughter them for their fur, bones, penises and anything that can be used to make traditional Chinese medicine and a big profit. Please watch this report from Dateline regarding the Tiger Temple and what’s going on there, 

Do you want to support that? Is it worth it?

So what about the beautiful and mighty elephant? Do they like to paint? Carrying tourists on their back for exotic safaris? Dance? Dress up? False.

The elephants live a long and sad life starting when they are just babies and get their mother killed in front of them. And then they need to break the elephant to make it do what they want. And this happens world over for Circuses and parks. Anywhere were elephants perform.

Text from WFFT ”wounds from the brutal training forcing the elephants to surrender to human’s commands. The wounds will be deeply inscribed into the elephants’ bodies and souls until the day they pass away. This kind of training takes no more than 7 days. The elephant is left starving-no food and no water, hacked with a goad, chained, sharply pulled at the legs, hurt, so scared that it defecate itself until it surrenders because of its mentally and physically fear.”

 

This is what all Thai elephants have been through before they can perform a show like playing football or walking on a rope. Or stand on its head, ride a bike or other things to amuse YOU.

So PLEASE, don’t support this cruelty for any animal in Thailand that are meant to amuse you. Or any Circus. Then YOU help this continue, you approve of this cruelty. ..

Sources:

 The Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand

Care For The Wild International (CWI)

Serbian Animals Voice

Travel Mole