Tiger Temple

From Free net encyclopedia

Tiger Temple, or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, is a Buddhist temple in Western Thailand which keeps numerous animals, among them several tame tigers that walk around freely once a day and can be petted by tourists.

The Theravada Buddhist temple is located in the Saiyok district of Thailand's Kanchanaburi province, not far from the border with Myanmar, along the 323 highway. It was founded in 1994 as a forest temple and sanctuary for numerous wild animals. In 1995, they received the Golden Jubilee Buddha Image, made of 80kg of gold.

Image:Dsc04570.jpg Image:Tourists tiger temple.jpg

In 1999 the temple received the first tiger cub; it had been found by villagers and died soon after. Several tiger cubs were later given to the temple, typically when the mothers had been killed by poachers. As of 2004, three cubs had been born at the temple and the total number of tigers was ten.

Name	Arrival	Born	Sex
Mek — Cloud	7 May 1999		Male
Phayak — Tiger	7 May 1999		Male
Phayu — Storm	25 June 1999		Male
Saifa — Lightning	25 June 1999		Male
Sairung — Rainbow	26 Sep 1999		Female
Chomnapha — Great Sky	15 Oct 1999		Female
Saengtawan — Sunshine	2 Feb 2000		Female
Darika — Starlet	born in Temple of Saifa and Saengtawan	23 Feb 2003	Female
Hernfa — Skywards	born in Temple of Saifa and Saengtawan	23 Feb 2003	Male
Famai — New Sky	born in Temple of Saifa and Saengtawan	1 June 2003	Male

These Corbetts Tigers spend most of the time in cages, being fed with dry cat food and chicken (the chicken is thoroughly cooked due to the current bird flu worries), and washed and handled by monks. Once a day, they are led on leashes to a nearby quarry, where they can roam around freely. Tourists may observe this from 10m away, and may even pet one of the tigers. So far, there has been one serious attack on a tourist.

The temple collects donations in order to build a larger tiger sanctuary which would allow the animals to live in an almost natural environment all day long, with plans to release some of the animals back into the wild.

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