A tiger of a day - pt I

Saturday night the five Italians cooked pasta and allowed me and two brits to relish on it. Then one of them mentioned the fact that on the next day at 6 am they were going to take some teenagers to a tiger sanctuary. I jumped at the opportunity. Little did I know what I was getting myself into (I never do...).

I woke up at 5h45 after going to bed at 1 am. It was hard getting up but not impossible. Valentina (from Florence) told me the kids were late. I went around the village taking pictures, it was the perfect setting: the streets were empty, the light was good, it was still fresh so I actually didn't sweat. At 7h30 I was still waiting. The Baan Unrak bakery was still closed. I layed down on the floor using my backpack as a pillow and waited some more. (for those of you who say I am not patient..) At 8h they arrived. Then Valentina and Iacopo (also from Florence) noticed that the brakes were failing, that the oil was dripping on one of the tires and that the fuel tank was on empty. A real riot. We waited for the second car as we had too many kids. We left Sangkla at 8h20.

The first gas station was of course out of gas. At least of diesel, not sure about the rest. We headed to the tiger temple (name of the sanctuary) hoping to find another station along the way. The second car (with brakes and gas) flew past us and we got separated. We called them but there was no connection... Nice start.

One good thing about living in a village in the middle of nowhere is that the locals are used to making do while being isolated, as such some little road restaurants/snack stores have little gasoline tanks. Usually around 20l of each type. We only managed to get 15l in to our car. Thankfully the others noticed we were missing and came back.

Here is the "gas station".

And we were off for the 3rd time. We dropped off a girl to visit her parents and arranged to pick her up later. Another girl was throwing up so she came in front with us and we were on our way for the 4th time. Only then I was informed that no one knew the way, only a rough idea. Yay... We passed the checkpoints easily - usually in Thailand when you go out of a distric your passport gets checked - which considering some of our kids don't have ID or passport was really lucky. Then the orphanage's director called to say we had to arrive before 12h otherwise the kids had to pay. It was 11h35.

After asking for directions and trying to fly the kids started screaming and hitting the car. Apparently we had passed it. We turned the car and drove back. We saw two wooden tigers on each side of the gate, we cheered! We made it! As our car was going in the kids hit the car again. Iacopo comes to the window and says "ooops, this is not the place"...





Paolo's car was arriving as we turned away from the wooden tigers. I could almost hear him swear in Italian... A few minutes later we found the right place:

The crucial moment. When we entered the sanctuary's grounds.

Of course we were 35 minutes too late and the kids were supposed to pay 500BTH along with the 5 volunteers. There was no way we could afford 32 tickets.Yes, we had 27 kids. The cashiers suggested to return on the next day as it was free for Thais, we explained where we came from. Showed a letter from our home, practically begged. They knew our place but rules were rules. The letter mentioned a different tiger place and mentioned 18 kids and not 27... Then out of the blue while we were negotiating between us if we could afford to pay for the kids, the lady in charge of the tiger program said that the kids' tickets would go into their relief program and that we only had to pay for ours. It was extremely nice of her. We had 18 kids paid for, paid for the rest and finally entered. No one cheered, we were tired.

We walked around a bit until we found one monk (the sanctuary is run by Buddhists monks and that is why we have to dress conservatively) walking around with a huge tiger on a leash. Insane. The workers told us to walk in a line and that we would all get our picture with the tiger, if we wanted too. Some kids walked away as soon as they saw the tiger. I went ahead thinking the monk would be holding the leash or something. But no, see below:

How insane is this? One hand tapping the tiger, the other holding the leash... I'm pretty sure my life insurance would not cover any accidents.

And here I thought, "no need to turn around, dude..."

More on our tiger day tomorrow as this post is going on forever...