A Visit to Tiger Kingdom ~ Vina Smart

For Christmas I instructed my boyfriend to drive us to Mae Rim, where I tried to trick him into believing we were doing something utterly uneventful. As we took the turn off the main road out of the city, huge signs started pouncing out of the bushes showing white lions and yawning tigers. I tried to feign deafness when he started yelling, "We're going to go see Richard Parker!" (ironically, we had just seen Life of Pi at the cinema the previous evening), although once we were walking inside, I finally admitted that we might actually be doing something pretty eventful after all.

We found ourselves in a large reception area full of excited, chatty tourists who were all waiting to buy a ticket, or perhaps for something else (I still have many years of tourist behaviour to study). When my boyfriend and I eventually got our chance at the front desk, we chose to buy a ticket each for the medium tigers, aged 9 - 12 months. We would get 15 minutes with the cats, and although there was an option to have photos taken for an extra cost, we opted to take our own. You can find the rest of the prices for the different tigers on the Tiger Kingdom Website.

Once we had our tickets, we were led into the park itself, and before we knew it we were in the enclosure with the cats. The guide was a big laid-back Thai man who almost reminded me of a tiger himself, and he gave us whatever information he could between our beginner's Thai and his broken English. These cats were considered teenagers, and were becoming more and more boisterous, with lots of energy to burn. This meant they would soon be moved into another enclosure, where many of them would not be safe to play with tourists at the Kingdom anymore. The man said that some of them would go to zoos or other tiger parks, where they could live out their days in comfortable captivity.

Hello Beautiful.

On the motorbike on the way home, my boyfriend and I had a discussion about our experience (this is actually where we have many of our deeper conversations, shouting at each other through our helmets, and incessantly repeating words like "Huh?" or "What?"). I was of the opinion that although creatures in captivity are a sad sight to behold, this is in many ways their only means of survival. He was of a similar opinion, but more curious about whether these animals were drugged, and to what extent their natural instincts had been trained right out of them for the sake of human safety. In the modern world, survival has become an outdated word. Wild animals are no longer surviving in their natural homes. Just because it's a fact doesn't mean it's right by any means, but we are not living in an ideal world. And because of that, is it not better for these animals to survive, even in captivity? Is it not better for them to avoid extinction, and for us to strive to breed them and raise them, even if that means they are somewhat domesticated, or more docile? And although it is unfortunate that exploitation must be used for monetary gain, is it not for the greater good when that money is used to care for the animals?

There were many questions left unanswered from our visit to the Tiger Kingdom, but at the end of the day I was glad to have seen actual living tigers, even in an enclosure, surrounded by snap-happy humans. That was a far better sight to me than no tigers at all.

UPDATE: Growing up in South Africa I was exposed to many issues related to wildlife conservation from a young age, and I stand by my belief that it is better for wildlife to survive in captivity as opposed to dying in the wild (just as our rhinos and lions in South Africa are only surviving in a form of captivity - they have long ago been wiped out in the wild just as tigers have in Asia). While it's a horrible reality that leaves us with those options, and I personally feel uncomfortable with the concept of caged animals in any form, I have to face the facts: there is no other alternative except extinction. Humans are not going to wake up tomorrow and decide to live as one with the earth and not bring harm to other living beings - no, they will wake up with their loaded guns and go out and kill them as usual, for whatever profit or pleasure. So when a place like Tiger Kingdom makes a tidy profit and us as tourists have a pleasurable experience, I find that to be the lesser evil by leaps and bounds. Which is why I won't write it off as one of "these places" as many people are quick to say (also, everybody conveniently seems to become an activist behind a keyboard). And that is merely one facet of the discussion I am trying to encourage with this blog post, so please don't be afraid to share. I will not, however, tolerate rude or nasty comments that do not contribute any value to this important and multi-faceted debate.