I was up early this morning for my tour to the Floating Markets and the Tiger Temple. I got picked up just after 7am by my guide whose name was Lin. We drove out of Bangkok for about an hour an a half to reach the Floating Markets. Once there we were all herded into yellow, motor powered long boats and taken about 20 minutes down the canal.

We reached the floating market and it was a great site. People in small wooden boats selling there wares, a lady screaming "You want coconut!" made me giggle. There were even people cooking on board their small wooden boats. I mean proper cooking too, they had gas powered deep fryers on board. I elected to have a ride on a small oar powered boat. I paid 150 baht to do this and climbed into a boat, crewed by a small Thai lady wearing a large blue sunhat.

I was paddled around the canals for about 30 minutes, many of the vendors were selling souvenirs. Once they saw you coming they got out this tool used for pulling boats closer, a kind of stick with a hook on the end. I managed to get through with out buying anything, a truly unique feat for me, although I did see this wonderful fan made entirely from peacock feathers, but how would I get that home/lug that around on the Trans-Mongolian for 9 months?

I got off my barge and had a walk around, there was a man standing on a bridge with a baby elephant, he was very cute, but the mind boggles as to how anyone ever got an elephant, even a small one, into this environment. There was also a man in this area with a large python, who was attempting to coat me over to pat it, saying "No scared!" Silly man, if he knew me he would know that I would have happily stood there and played with the reptile all day. I gave the snake a pat and moved on.

On the way out of the markets, I spotted another peacock fan and asked about its price, 650 baht the lady said. Although this is very cheap I walked away, I had only been curious, "450 baht!" the lady yelled running after me. "No, No I was just curious I said", "Ok 250 baht," she said grabbing my arm. I couldn't resist, it was so beautiful and so cheap! I bought it and got back into the van, staring at my purchase and wondering what the hell I was now supposed to do with it. I guess I always figure something out when I comes to tat.

We left the floating markets and drove a few miles up the road for an elephant ride, which no one wanted to do so we all moved on. We arrived at our next attraction which was the snake show. I was deliberating whether or not I actually wanted to see this. Animal shows are not usually my thing, especially after a 6 month jaunt in Africa, seeing animals happy in the wild is wonderful and I was hoping that I would not be seeing the opposite end of the scale in Thailand.

Alas for me and for the animals in the show, the later was unfortunately true. I was witness to some of the most unsettling and cruel acts I had ever witnessed. The worst of which was when they wheeled out a perspex box containing a mongoose and placed a cobra inside and we watched them fight to the death. At first, the two animals seemed uninterested in each other, but before long I was watching the snake, with its hood inflated, attack the mongoose, who subsequently ripped the snakes head off. It actually made me want to cry for the poor creatures.

At the end of the show one of the men brought out 3 yellow and black snakes and was trying to entice them to bite him. The man teased them and grabbed them by their tails, moving away just in the knick of time as to avoid injury…. It was awful. I was actually sitting there routing for the snakes! I say this in all seriousness, I wanted the man to get bitten.

After the show, I had a look around the park, there were many creatures in perpex boxes to see, there was also a large crocodile in a small squalid enclosure. How did the last remaining ancestor of the dinosaurs end up here I wondered. I was glad when we left the snake park.

After the horrible display of cruelty, we were taken for a shopping stop at a horrendously over priced souvenir market. This seemed mostly to separate the people who were going back to Bangkok from the people who were moving on to the Tiger Temple.

We got back in the van, which was now filled to capacity and drove on to the lunch stop which was about an hour away. Lo and behold, the lunch stop was a restaurant floating on the River Kwai. As usual the food was buffet, but at least it was Thai and tasted good this time.

After lunch we got back into the van and drove for another hour to the Tiger Temple. We got there and the guide paid for us to go in. We had to trek for a while, through what looked like a barren wasteland to get the where the tigers were actually kept. When I got there I saw about twelve tigers in an open space, some of them were chained to posts and nearly all of them were asleep.

I had many pictures taken with the big cats, and unlike in Mauritius, where they were actually adolescent tigers, these were BIG cats, fully grown male tigers, the largest of which weighed 400 pounds. I sat down on the ground and had the largest of the tigers heads in my lap, even his head felt like it weighed a ton. He was a magnificent creature, I didn't even look at the camera, I just sat there and patted him, not believing what I was actually doing.

After that experience, I went round and met all the other cats, the others were a bit smaller and I had my picture taken with all of them. I walked off to the next area, where there was a cub sitting on a raised platform with one of the monks, so I went and had my picture taken with them also. The cub seemed much more lively than the adults.

It was now feeding time and the monks were taking the tigers away, on leashes. I did witness the big male tiger, stop and sit down and the monk try to drag him away….to no avail. A site which almost made me laugh, I remember trying to put Frosty, our domestic house cat when I was a kid on a leash to take here for a walk. She did the same thing. You can't lead a cat. The tiger then decided he wanted to go up a tree, he raised his paws so he was sitting up, using the tree for support and looked at everyone, as if to say, Dare Me? It was so cute the way he looked at us with this cheeky glimmer in his eye.

I then went for a walk back to the van, past a cage, with the fattest bear in it that I had ever seen, an Asiatic black bear, who again, I felt sorry for. I also walked past a heard of buffalo who were wallowing in some nearby mud, at least they seemed happy.

I got back in the van and then we were taken to the Bridge on the River Kwai, something I thought I was going to miss. We reached the War Museum and after a brief look around I went to have a look at the bridge. I walked over it from end to end, there was a multi-coloured train going backwards and forward across it, quite different from the old death railway from the war days.

We left the Bridge and visited the POW cemetery, briefly before heading back to Bangkok, which was now two hours away. On the way back the driver got into a massive fight with the guide and he attempted to remove her from the van. The guide nearly ended up in tears, the driver was a right b******. Wow, I thought, I can relate to this in spades, as memories of awful Turkish bus drivers at Fez came flooding back, with the exception of my Assim of course.

I got back to my hotel and then went out for dinner at Retro Rachethewi, and ate the worst meal I ever had in Thailand. The entrée just seemed like it was fried chicken bones and the main had about 4 actual pieces of chicken in it, the rest was onions. I then returned to the hotel to pack for Phuket tomorrow.