Sacrilege & Tiger Kingdom

When we first arrived in Chiang Mai, the cab driver that drove our friends' from the airport was coincidentally LDS. He told us he could give us a ride to church on Sunday, which was about 20 minutes from our hotel. Stacey got his contact info and rang him up on Saturday night to confirm a ride Sunday morning. Turns out he wasn't actually LDS, but had just learned about our church from some missionaries. He kindly didn't charge us for the ride, and opted to wait for us in the parking lot instead of coming in to worship. We were late and only made it in time for half of the Sacrament. Most of our friends were good and went in to worship for the whole hour, while we were sac (i.e. sacrilegious) and ditched out right after to go play tourist. I had to laugh when I later told my mom that we ditched church to go visit a Buddhist shrine. That made it sound even more sac. Ha ha.

The church was on a huge lot and was way bigger than our meetinghouse in Okinawa.

Adam, Hollie, Spencer and I walked over to Wat Phra Singh. It was ornate and shiny, like all the others Buddhist places of worship.

Wat Phra Singh

I love looking for consistencies in our religious worship and in the worship of these Asian religions that are so different from ours. Even if it is something as simple as not wearing your street shoes in a temple.

Band playing near the vendors next to Wat Phra Singh. They were a busy group, as we saw them performing later that night at the Sunday Walking Market.

When we got to this building, Hollie had just come out. She told us there were four monks inside that just stare at you, and it was super intense. We went up to take pictures and check it out. As Spencer got closer and closer, he realized they weren't actually real. We had a good laugh about that.

Intense fake monks, with pious followers Adam, Hollie, and Spencer.

On our way out, we saw a lady by the main entrance selling little birds. Apparently it was good luck to release them in front of the temple. We were sold and thought it would be fun to take part.

Two little birdies, about to be free.

Adam & Hollie

We had to undo some twist ties on either side of the wooden cage to open it up. The closer we got to releasing the birds, the further we leaned back away from them. Spencer was practically doing a backbend by the time we let them go.

Spencer's face in this picture is the best!

After meeting back up with our friends, we stuck with our not-really-LDS taxi driver (a decision we would all later regret) and had him take us up to Tiger Kingdom.

We started out petting the baby tigers. They were soooo sleepy, the trainers said they sleep for like 18 hours a day. 

This one may as well have been dead for how unresponsive it was.

This baby was kind of in and out, but mostly out.

This one was awake!

And it was cute as can be.

Next we went in with the big boys. The setup was four tigers in a huge cage, with four different groups of people in at a time, each with their own trainer.

We watched several other groups go in and come out alive, which made me a little less nervous. I was the only girl from our group who wanted to go in with the adult tigers, officially making me the most irresponsible mother.

The big tigers were also quite sleepy, resting on these concrete slabs in the shade while we all nervously took turns petting them and taking pictures with them.

Our second tiger was awake, and the trainer was using a stick with leaves to play with it. It made me really nervous to see our friends get up so close to the tiger when it was in play mode. Then, tragedy struck when Adam dropped his sunglasses while holding its tail. He was bending down to pick them up, being oblivious to the tiger's interest in getting those leaves.

Within a second it jumped up on all fours, his tail hitting Adam in the "tenders" in the process. At that point I was unashamedly using the four men in our group as human shields to separate me from the tiger. Spencer said the guy next to Adam jumped about 10 feet in the air when he heard Adam cry out in pain.

Recovering from the impact.

Spencer, taking precautions when it was his turn to get closer.

I was only brave enough to get down by it when the trainer put away his "toy."

The third tiger was another sleepy one. I love this photo sequence of Spencer, showing how brave we were when the tigers were just laying there, but how quick we were on our guard if they made any sudden movements.

Practically spooning.

Sitting up after it moved a bit.

Gettin' the dodge out of there when it looked back at him.

Back to partial spooning.

When it was over, I enjoyed another "We made it out alive!" moment. Some of the group went on to see more tigers, while the rest of us went to find a place for lunch. Enter the most annoying taxi driver in the world. He was in the building and tried to tell us where to go, even though he had no idea of our plans. Then when he found out where we were thinking of having lunch, he told us we shouldn't go there. When we went anyway, he followed us up and sat at our table and watched us eat. He was clearly in breach of some unspoken rules of the typical driver/drivee relationship, and it made for a pretty awkward experience.

At lunch, we felt cool drinking our coconut shake out of a coconut.

Before we left, Adam, Hollie, Justin, and Stacey took turns doing the Zorb Balls in a pond next to Tiger Kingdom. It made for some good entertainment.

We were happy to say "siyonara" to our driver after he dropped us off at the Sunday Walking Market. After shopping and dinner, we took another classy tuk-tuk back to our hotel.