Thursday, March 15, 2007

A depressing experience

Just returned from a great holiday (speaking of which, I swear I will NEVER complain about the traffic in Auckland EVER again after visiting london, hyderabad and bangkok). The whole experience was fantastic except for the last day. I went to a place that I will never forget.

In bangkok there is a place called the elephant park (or zoo..or something). I assumed that it'd be a wildlife park where I'd see wild animals roaming about. Or at the very least a zoo like the one in Auckland. The first thing that I saw there depressed me to no end. I love tigers. I've always thought that they're the most majestic creatures on the planet, and the walls of my room are plastered with pictures of tigers. So what do I see as soon as I walk in? Too huge, fully grown, absolutely beautiful tigers chained to the ground with chains less than a foot long. And for 100Bahts you could get a picture taken with them. So there they were. People holding up the tigers tail and smiling for the photo, stripping them away of all their dignity. I really had tears in my eyes.

Walking through the park, things didn’t get any better. We saw elephants chained that people paid 10Bahts to feed. And the way the elephants were going for the food, it was obvious they had been starved just so they would perform tricks for people who were giving them food. The next part of the park were elephant rides. And though I was apprehensive to take part in it, I went along. It started off fine, till I saw that the guy who was making the elephant move had an iron nail in his hand. Which he used to poke the elephant with everytime it seemed like it would stop. As if my day couldn’t get worse. I couldn’t wait to get off that elephant and through the rest of the ride I really had to stop myself from crying everytime the guy poked the elephant.

And now I feel so guilty, because I was a part of that. If people like me didn’t go wanting to see that crap, they wouldn’t have a place like that would they?

Why are we all so cruel? Do animals mean nothing to us.

I don’t think I will ever in my life get over watching those tigers.

4 comments:

Amrita said...

That is terrible!

'Tis a beautiful life! said...

it definitely was...never go there if ever in bangkok

Vik said...

cool...so did u get your pic taken with tigers??

Vik said...

pity they were chained though. in gold coast movie world they weren't chained but did heaps of cool stuff that cats do, like jumping and shit