Wow, what a time we have had since the last update... We have fully recovered from our Cambodian adventure and managed to travel to several parts of Thailand (and even a day trip to Burma) before we spent the month of July at The Tiger Temple....
July started with us arriving in Kanchanaburi (120km west of Bangkok) to do a months voluntary work at the tiger temple.. On our first day we were assigned to our tigers for the month, which just so happened to be 6 3 month old cubs called Liverpool, Trouble, Flower, Hickup, Mekmai and No name... Rachel looked after trouble and Anthony looked after no name and quickly named her Teeny (as she was a week younger than the others and the smallest)..
It was our pleasure to walk these cubs to the temple each morning for breakfast with the monks and the guests.. After breakfast we would either bath, clean the cage and de-bone the chicken for the cubs or we would be on cleaning duty for some of the other tigers!!! After cleaning up tiger poo, rotten chicken carcasses and smelling tiger wee (very strong smell of ammonia) a baby's nappy is going to be a walk in the park (No Rachel is NOT pregnant!!).
We spent the month with other volunteers from Israel, France, Australia and Russia..
3 weeks into our adventure Rachel was bitten on her right thigh by a 7 month old cub!!! Photo's will follow as the scar is now looking quite good!!! Anthony had several tiger bites from the cubs on his arms as well...
We have lots to tell you about our month at the tiger temple but the photo's will do all the talking...
August has seen us stay in Chang Mai (North Thailand) then cross the border into Laos for a few days and we took a 2 day slow boat down the Mekong River and stayed overnight in a place called PackBeng.. We had a few days in LuangPrabang (still in Laos) and it was wonderful, so chilled out and the scenery was spectacular...
After leaving LuangPrabang we headed towards Vietnam and had a crazy period where we were travelling on buses for 38 out of 48 hours!!! We arrived in Hanoi at 5am and the place is bloody awful... so much noise and traffic and the people are so rude.. We quickly found some sanctuary in a place called Kangaroo Cafe (run by a crazy aussie guy) and we booked trips to Halong Bay and Sapa with them.... Halong Bay was wonderful as only 5 of us where on the boat for the day and night... When we went to Sapa it was us and probably the most levelheaded American I have had the pleasure of meeting!! Both Halong Bay and Sapa are wonderful places and the people and scenery was awesome... again we have hundreds of photo's of both places..
We leave Vietnam on Monday 22nd Aug and head to Indonesia (flying in and out of Jakarta on the same morning) and we will make our way across to Bali so we can relax and enjoy the beaches (missing them so much now) before we head off to New Zealand...
New Zealand is getting so close now and we can't wait, we have even started wearing some warmer clothes in Vietnam in preparation of the cold.. it has been snowing in NZ this week!!!
It is now 7 weeks till we get home and we are both looking forward to it as packing and unpacking the bags (Rachel has done all the packing so far and what a wonderful job she has done) every few days is getting to be a chore...
Time to go and see what our next adventure will bring - hopefully some better luck than Hull City had against Leeds the other night (Paul I presume I owe you a beer for that or we can double or quits on the reverse fixture at KC???)
Cheerio
Ant & Rach
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