My first official weekend in Bangkok

This weekend started out with a guided tour (aka tourist trap) to see the sights outside of Bangkok.  I discovered this tour through one of the other residents of my apartment building (Thana apartments).
So off Bill and I went to discover the Samnoen Saduak floating markets (Bill is the new director of SSPO, he started the same week I arrived in Thailand).

This market was located 100km outside of Bangkok near Damnoen Saduak southwest of Bankok.  The market is a labyrinth of narrow canals (Khlongs).  Small wooden boats are paddled mainly by female merchants, some of whom are dressed in traditional blue farmers shirts and straw hats.  All sorts of merchandise is sold from the boats including spices, fruits, vegetables, soups, meat, and other souvenirs.  Along the walkways on either side of the canals are merchants selling all sorts of things for the tourists; shirts, scarfs, and other creams and potions.  Very interesting to see.  There were also snakes that you could get your picture taken with (both an albino boa and the regular variety), elephants you could feed for a small fee, and lots of other wonderful sights.

I also sampled some strange fruits that I had never seen before, yummy and sweet called Mangosteens.  Purple on the outside (which you peel away), but are white on the inside and look like garlic cloves.

I elected not to take a boat down the canal, as I would have had to pay the equivalent to the cost of the full day trip to do this.  Instead Bill and I wandered around taking pictures and taking everything in. At one point, poor Bill got tackled by one of the street vendors selling "tiger" balm (not so sure it was tiger balm, as the creams were these toxic looking colors.  Nothing that resembled the stuff we know in North America).  He ended up with about 7 bottles of the stuff because the lady wouldn't give him change, only the creams.

After we were finished touring floating market we headed off to the River Kwai.  I walked across the bridge with my Dutch friend from our tour, Mathieu from Utrecht.  He was very nice, and was commenting on life in Thailand.  He noted how the pace of life here is a much slower, likely due to the heat.  He also commented on how dirty the outside of buildings are compared to European standards (as well as North American standards).

Bridge of over the River Kwai

Then we all loaded into the bus and headed off to the Tiger Temple, Kanchanaburi.  Also called the Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno forest monastery, established in 1994.  It was started as a place where injured jungle fowl were nursed back to health.  Later wild boar were added to the list of animals that came to the monastery for care.  Soon villagers also started bringing unwanted pets, and later other animals moved in, including deer, buffalo, cows, horses and goats.  The first tiger arrived in 1999.  Brought to the monks to be nursed to health.  The cub's mother was killed by poachers, and the cub was ordered to be stuffed.  The cub had been injected with formaldehyde, but survived and later found and later brought to the monastery for care.  Soon people began to bring other orphaned cubs to the monks to be raised and tamed.  
Visiting the temple was interesting, however I had mixed feelings about the adventure.  Such grand animals should be free in the wilds, and not on leashes.  On the other hand, who can say they have pet and walked with a tiger?