rtw with lucy

We visited a city called Kanchanaburi in Thailand. It was really one of the best places we visited. There are several things of interest in this town. First of all the town is infamous due to the Movie “The bridge over the river Kwai”-this town has a museum and cemetary related to the prisoners of war who were forced to build the ” death railroad” tracks from Thailand into Burma during WW2. The Japanese held the prisoners in camps under deplorable conditions and many many American,Dutch,English,Australian and Asians died during the war. The JEATH museum gives a history of the Japanese brutality. We were at the museum at the same time some Japanese tourists were there. Some went through in a big hurry(guilt?) and one Japanese lady seemed very overcome with emotion. We took a ride on the train that goes over the bridge and into the hills for about two hours. The scenery was beautiful and the trip made more meaningful knowing the history of the rail line. I would suggest this train trip for anybody visiting Thailand. Now about the tiger temple, outside of Kanchanaburi is a Monks temple where you can visit and actually pet full grown tigers. The monks have taken in abandoned and injured tigers and are developing a breeding program so that the tigers may be released to the wild. There is a small canyon where they take the tigers and chain them. Visitors are taken one by one(holding hands) with a trainer and are allowed to get down to tiger level and pet the tiger and have pictures taken. Crazy as it sounds it seems safe but we were still nervous about letting Erin and Lucy do it. But we did and below are some pictures. The complex also has other animals and one time a day the monks throw out food in the street and hundreds of cows,wild pigs, horses, peacocks,barking deer,goats all feed together. The strange zoo is also expanding and eventually there will be natural habitat for the tigers to run free in. We did enjoy the experience- we had read stories on the internet that the tigers were drugged and not very well cared for but we did not observe this. The tigers were lazy and mostly laid down but cats do this anyway in the heat of the day- nothing out of the ordinary. Tiger temple is grrrrreat! Gene

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