Overview of Tiger Kingdom
Millions of people travel to Thailand every year. Known for it’s immaculate waters, beaches, infinite shimmering temples and their undeniably delicious Thai food, but there is a part of Thai tourism that many people don’t discuss, the bad part. Although Thailand has so many positives there are a few negatives worth talking about before making your trip across the world. One of the negatives includes their poor treatment of animals for human pleasure, i.e., elephant riding and visiting tigers. I am not an animal activist, however, I’ll admit I am an animal lover and after visiting Thailand and experiencing the treatment of some of their animals I can definitely say I’m against it.
In the cities of Chiang Mai and Phuket, Thailand, the facility, Tiger Kingdom, operates as an attraction where people can interact with tigers of all ages. From babies to huge six hundred pound adult males you can interact with them all for a small price. Before visiting Chiang Mai I had heard horror stories of how they drug the tigers and how inhumane the whole idea of it is. I did some research and one of my favorite travel bloggers, going without name, had an article about how he thought it was ok to visit the tigers. His reasoning, because of the signs up “everywhere” around Tiger Kingdom stating “we do not use drugs on these tigers.” Being a travel blogger, I thought I’d check it out for myself and be the judge. Let me be the first to tell you, there are NO signs that say the tigers aren’t drugged. They are without a doubt drugged, very drugged. They are drugged for very obvious reasons…to prevent them from being conscious enough to rip your face off. They’re meat-eating carnivores, they don’t know any better.
Visiting the Baby Tigers
When we reached the facility I opted only to visit the baby tigers. I thought there’d be no harm to check out the facilities for myself to share about my experience. My other thought process was that the babies were probably harmless little guys; hence, no need for the drugs. Now, I’m not calling Tiger Kingdom out on drugging the baby tigers too, although, I would say there is a great chance they were. Their eyes were extremely glossy and all fifteen of the baby tigers were asleep for a majority of the time I was in the cage. The worst part of it all was they were already declawed at such a young age. When I suggested to the man working there “These babies are on drugs,” he laughed and said, “No, they’re nocturnal. They’re awake at night.”
The babies were obviously heart-wrenchingly cute, I tried to make the most of my fifteen minutes in the pin with them and rub their bellies.
Sleeping, sleeping, and more sleeping…ZzzZzzZZzz
Big Cat Experience
I personally didn’t go visit the large tigers, but my friend, Kiley, who I was traveling with did. Her pictures and comments about the adults were enough to make both of us cringe. They had blue-ish purple spots ALL over their bodies. Kiley asked the “trainer” what the spots were? The “trainer” really just being the man who pokes them enough so they wake up for a few seconds to hold their eyes open for a couple pictures…He said they were antibiotics. A load of bologna! Later, when we were looking through her pictures of the big tigers we noticed their teeth had been completely filed down.
You can’t go in the cages with the lions however I took this photo…THAT is how close you are able to get to these massive animals, kind of crazy.
This guy was huge. Unfortunately he had blue spots all over his body from what the trainers called “antibiotics”…From this photo you can also tell that his teeth have been filed down.
Overall Impression of Tiger Kingdom
Looking back on the whole experience I feel stupid I even went. Obviously these large animals that are meat-eating carnivores are drugged. There is no way these tigers would be trained to take pictures all day long without getting irritated. It was hard for me to reject going to play with baby tigers, that’s why I went, that’s why everyone goes. I was duped, and now I know. I now completely understand why people are against this practice and I am now a strong believer against it as well. These animals should not be kept in captivity for the pleasure of humans, plain and simple.
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