Another place on my “Relatively Unknown Thailand” list is the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi Province. Although this temple (real name Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno)  is barely mentioned in most guidebooks, it is fast becoming one of the major attractions of Kanchanaburi. The abbot, Phra Acharn Phusit, pictured above, has been caring for abandoned tigers ever since 1999. The mother of the first cub he took in had been killed by poachers.  By that time, Phra Acharn Phusit was already known locally as a Thai version of Dr. Doolittle for his caring of sick and and abandoned wildlife and pets. While most temple grounds have stray dogs, this temple has wandering buffalo, horses, wild goats and monkeys. The first tiger cub died from its injuries, but a few weeks later two more tiger cubs were rescued from poachers and brought to the temple. Word soon spread and more abandoned or injured tigers were brought to the temple. Today, the tigers outnumber the monks by about two to one.

Wat Tham Sua and Wat Tham Khao Noi with rice fields in the foreground

When we first set up Thai-Blogs.com, it was our intention on not only giving you an insight into Thai life and culture, but also showing you a bit of “Unseen Thailand”. After all, it has been the long-running mandate of Paknam Web to “Promote Thailand to the World”. If you already know Thailand, then we want you to love it more. If you have never been here before, then we would very much like it if you spend your next holiday here in Thailand. At Thai-Blogs, we would also like to help you plan your holidays by giving you some beautiful pictures of popular destinations around Thailand. Guidebooks are quite good at helping you, but they never give personal opinions. They are also limited on the number of pictures they can show you. The place I want to share with you today comes under the category “Relatively Unseen Thailand”.

It is very difficult now for me to conjure up mental images of what I thought Thailand would like like before I first arrived here. It was back in 1992 when I first started thinking about Thailand. I was in Australia at the time and coming to the end of my one year work visa. (I say “work visa” but I don’t really want to give you the misconception that I was actually working. I had bought myself a station wagon and had spent the year on the road.) It was now time to fly home. I cannot remember exactly why, but I started playing with the idea of stopping over in Bangkok on the way home. I remember going to the local travel agents and flipping through brochures for Thailand. Some of the pictures that caught my attention weren’t of beaches. They were the green rice paddies. The picture above, that I took in Kanchanaburi, brought that memory flooding back today.

Tourists walking over the famous "Bridge of the River Kwai"

Well, just a short time back feeling rather bored with the repititiousness of my weekend holidays here in Suphanburi I decided to head out of the province and go relax elsewhere for a couple of days.