[StarVegabond]

Dear SS da

once again another fantastic travelogue from you.
this deserves a 5 star.

but i feel bit sad that the once the king/prince of the jingle "Tiger" is being trated as a tamed dog. In my view, we humans should not invade thier homes (and ofcourse vice versa)

[SS-Traveller]

The show was over a little too soon, and the tigers were led away by the chain to a deeper part of the complex which is inaccessible to visitors.



Then comes the messy part - the cows are released, and their feed - truckloads of pumpkins - is dropped on to the road we are to walk on back to the parking lot. Even deer and pigs turn up to feed, and the stench is awful.















And in that mess goes Mr. Purple, zooming around on his ATV.

[CorsaLove]

SS - Amazing travelogue this is.

Very helpful information as well as treat for the eyes also. Please tell me this is not the end and you have more of the pics and information coming

[jp2u]

Wow dude, this is one hellva trip. kudos to you. you seem to be surrounded by wildlife every where you go and the Tigers just makes me so nervous, because i have never been so close to a tiger before.

[SS-Traveller]

Originally Posted by StarVegabond

but i feel bit sad that the once the king/prince of the jingle "Tiger" is being trated as a tamed dog. In my view, we humans should not invade thier homes (and ofcourse vice versa)

The tigers of Thailand and how they are being kept in that country (and esp. the tigers at the Tiger Temple) is a matter of huge debate and controversy internationally. Animal rights activists suspect these animals are being ill-treated and/or drugged to modify their natural instincts and behaviour, while the Thais maintain that the tiger is being gradually wiped out from the wild, therefore breeding and rearing them in captivity is better than making them extinct.

Our third encounter with domesticated tigers was at the Tiger Kingdom, Chiang Mai. Take a look and decide for yourself.

[SS-Traveller]

We'd seen so many tigers in Thailand, you do realise how boring it becomes at the end. Of course, my daughter couldn't have enough of it. So there we were at the Chiang Mai Night Safari, queueing up to look at tigers in the dark, and one fellow comes along with a white tiger cub on a leash!













Finally we were away from Chiang Mai and off to Pattaya - where, hopefully, there would be no tigers. How wrong we were! There's the Sriracha Tiger Zoo, to which we had entry tickets, thanks to the composite tickets we bought from Highlight 5 Entertainment. "Come visit Pattaya, the city of fun and relaxation" - this let us gain entry to the Ripleys and Tuxedo Magic Museums, the Tiffany and Alangkorn Shows, apart from the Tiger Zoo - all for 999 THB. A whopping saving of over 1200 THB as compared to the individual ticket prices at all these places.

At least at the Sriracha Zoo we got to see a tiger living with a pig and two dogs in the same cage. As well as got to cuddle a cute little tiger cub that meows, for free while the keeper wasn't looking! (Usual charges: 150THB).

[SS-Traveller]

Ran up against the 30 photo limiter in the earlier post, so here are the few more pics form the Sriracha Tiger Zoo near Pattaya - including the one which saved us 150THB!

[SS-Traveller]

Well, I guess I've bored you all to sleep with the unending pics of tigers in Thailand... All right, folks, let's see if I can wake you up now, with a few pics of cars in Thailand.







More to come...

[SS-Traveller]

India comes home in a Maruti, but Thailand comes home, and goes out, in a Toyota. The Toyota brand rules the minds and hearts of Thais completely, and Honda is a poor second cousin. Most taxis are Corollas (though a few are Innovas too). I had not spotted a single Hyundai on the roads there!


The favourite car body style is the pick-up, and over 50% of all vehicles on the roads of Thailand are pick-ups.





Modding is a favourite activity with car owners - and even taxis and tuk tuks - and alloys, low profile tyres, FFEs, chromed exhausts and LED lights are seen in large numbers in even smaller towns like Kanchanaburi and Chiang Mai. Even spotted a Fino scooter with golden alloys and low-profile tyres!





The principal fuel in use in Thailand is CNG, and it is dirt cheap - @ 8.50 THB per kg. LPG is also widely used, and is similarly cheap, @ 11 THB per litre. At that price, no one switches off engines at traffic jams...

[SS-Traveller]

How I wish I could have one of these...

[SS-Traveller]

An interesting car which is actually a motor boat - seen at the Ripley's Museum at Pattaya.

[SS-Traveller]

Time to take on another subject - the various gigantic aquaria in Thailand. There's one (Siam Ocean World) in the basement of an endless mall called the Siam Paragon, in the heart of Bangkok. Another we came across was at Chiang Mai, the Chiang Mai Zoo Aquarium. And a third that we decided to give the miss, the Underwater World in Pattaya.

Before we leave the topic of cars, here's a car we found in the Siam Ocean World, filled up with water, with fish swimming inside!










Never mind cars, they've even got fishes swimming inside a microwave and a fridge!

[SS-Traveller]

Some pics from the Siam Ocean World at Bangkok.

[tanwaramit]

show us the sharks at Siam Ocean World. available in several numbers, plus the showrooms of Ferrari, Porsche, Hummer, etc in Siam Paragon. Sweet memories.

[SS-Traveller]

Originally Posted by tanwaramit

show us the sharks at Siam Ocean World. available in several numbers, plus the showrooms of Ferrari, Porsche, Hummer, etc in Siam Paragon. Sweet memories.

Here goes some pics of sharks. I'd gone to look at the cars which make all of us here salivate, and thought I'll come back later on and do a proper photo-shoot. Unfortunately for me (and to the joy of the rest of my family) by the time we finished at the Ocean World and had a bite to eat, it was too late to go back and look at the cars there! We never found the time after that to go back to Siam Paragon.

I guess that gives me a reason to go back to BKK one more time! As someone discussed on another thread, if you manage to cover everything at one go, the incentive to visit the place again is gone - so we consciously leave aside some of the things to see and do to keep alight the hope of returning there sometime later on!