5/15 Tiger Kingdom, Zip Line Tour, and Muay Thai Boxing

5/15/2013: Funny side-story (I'm not sure when exactly this happened) - I was at Devon and Jordan's hotel (where my friend John, who is Thai, works), and I was talking to him for a bit after D & J went to bed. He first asked if they are "lovers," which is very funny if you know Devon and Jordan. Then he asked if they are from my village - I said yes, and now I plan on always referring to Denver as my village in the future. John's village sounds a little different, and he seems to be the Thai equivalent of a backwoods redneck - in his village, he hunts squirrels and monkeys, and even claims to have eaten leopard roadkill, but I'm a little skeptical.

Full photo album: https://picasaweb.google.com/108933817613007660268/20130515TigerKingdomAndJungleZipLine?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCO6MnKi-ip39GQ&feat=directlink

In the morning, a driver picked us up from Devon and Jordan's hotel and drove us about 30 minutes north to Tiger Kingdom, a total tourist trap where we got to see a bunch of tigers. There are always rumors surrounding Tiger Kingdom about whether the tigers are sedated, but I will attest that once you enter a penned area with a very large tiger and the only thing protecting you from it is a bored Thai guy with a small stick, you will want the tiger to be sedated. Ariel and I had talked to a British couple about the place and they said it was worth seeing but they make no attempt to hide the fact that Tiger Kingdom is a money-making enterprise. It does not give a warm and fuzzy feeling like the Elephant Nature Park. As soon as you enter the gates, the prices are posted: 420 B to see big tiger, 520 to see medium sized tiger, 620 B to see small tiger,...and there were package deals to combine the different sized tigers. Ariel and I picked "big tiger" and "smallest tiger," and Jordan and Devon picked all of the tigers.

Our first stop was the "smallest tigers" (1-4 months old), and they didn't disappoint. Some were very playful, others were sleeping. I got lots of pictures and videos. Some of the tigers were named after American tech celebs, like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. One baby tiger was named after a Japanese celebrity, and the oldest tiger cub was just named Nancy.
Here's a video:

 





In the pen next door were a number of full-sized tigers that were certainly not sedated at all. A fight broke out between two of them and it was an impressive show of their size and power. A worker was cleaning out a small pool of water separating the two pens, and one of the full-grown tigers was eagerly following every movement from the other side of the fence, looking for an opportunity to grab a hold of the guy or the long net he was using. The worker didn't seem to notice that the tiger was salivating over him (video below):

"Medium" Tigers playing:

Devon and Jordan went to visit the other less popular tigers, and then we all went into the big tiger cage. All of these tigers were lazily lounging around, and we were able to take pictures of each other "spooning" the sleepy tigers. One was lying on his back with his paws curled up above his chest, so I tried to imitate his position next to him but apparently got too close to his upper half so the Thai trainer made a noise that made me jump to my feet in fear that I was about to get mauled. The tiger was still sleeping, so it was a bit of an overreaction, and I was able to lay back down and get my stupid picture.

As you can see from my shirt, I'm your biggest fan.

Again, I'm not sure if these tigers were sedated or not, but at the time I was hoping they were. We took a bunch more pictures but were ready to leave once we saw the Thai trainer whack a tiger in its mouth with a wooden stick to get it to stay in one spot so we could take more pictures. We all looked at each other and decided it was time to go.

A 20 minute drive took us to the Eagle Track Zip Line tours, where a bunch of platforms have been constructed in the trees and connected by cables. We put on harnesses and helmets and were given little whittled sticks that were to be used as our brakes, which was a bit disconcerting. The tour was a combination of long zip lines and rappels, and it was a lot of fun, albeit a little short at one hour. Many of the zip lines covered around 200 yards, and shot us through the jungle and then out into clearings where we were about 100 feet above farmland. We didn't see any wildlife but it was a different perspective of the jungle. Overall, it was pretty touristy but lots of fun.



We returned to Chiang Mai and relaxed a bit before going for dinner and drinks and then a Muay Thai boxing match. The boxing "stadium" was pretty much as seedy as I expected, with little shops all the way around that served drinks and food, and guys were walking around taking bets. The night consisted of around 6 different matches, starting with 2 matches with boys fighting, then two womens' bouts, then two special bouts with men, including the final round with an Australian guy. The bouts were fun to watch, although we didn't really know how the scoring was done, so sometimes it wasn't obvious who was winning. The boxing style involves the usual punches (they wear gloves) as well as knees and kicks. There were a couple of knockouts, but no real devastating hits. The funniest part was after the 4th bout, they brought out around 8 guys, blindfolded them, and let them loose. They were just wildly swinging, sometimes connecting. The ref occasionally got attacked, but he was having fun pushing the blindfolded fighters into each other and away from him. In the final match, the Australian guy surprisingly knocked out the Thai guy, which was pretty exciting except that I had picked the Thai guy to win.