After lunch we had time for one more stop so we decided to give Tiger Kingdom a try. The premise is you get to visit with a tiger f your choice, the choice being by size. Horrible to say but small, medium and large. Depending on the size is what you pay. The babies are the most sought after so most expensive. The large full grown tigers were the cheapest. We choice the babies (I’m not sure what Eduardo’s reasoning was but mine was that the baby could do the least damage if things went sideways).
So you pay your money and you’re put on a wait list to visit with your tiger. Each tiger is in its own cage area so you head over to that cage to see when your number comes up the tv screen. When it does, you have 10 minutes to interact with the tiger.
We ended up seeing 3 babies in our cage area but the experience was not what I was expecting. The handlers had sticks to swat their paws when the animals weren’t “doing what they were told”. While it did it look like they weren’t being hurt, you could tell that the babies were intimated by the stick. And my gut told me that they likely got hit on more than just their paws when people weren’t around.
I ended up not interacting with the tigers for about 2-3 min as I didn’t feel comfortable with the whole experience. Instead I just took photos for Eduardo while he and the handler worked with the tigers.
In the end we both didn’t feel great about the experience. I’m going to post a Tripadvisor review for Tiger Kingdom when I get home to weigh in on the controversial topic.
I would not have been comfortable either.
I think speaking up is a good idea.
As usual you are doing a great job keeping us entertained.