I went to Thailand last month for a missions trip and it was a lot emotionally and physically (read here for more info). This is my second time in Bangkok and the priority was to work with New Beginnings, but I also wanted to make sure my team had some time to learn about Thailand culture. We booked a few tours and one of the excursions was to Tiger World – a place where the tigers are actually pets to a family in Thailand. When we got there, we were given different options: we could play with newborn tigers, feed and play with medium size tigers or feed and play with large tigers.

My friend, Allyson, and I went for both feeding the medium size tigers and playing with newborns. Our two other teammates decided to play with newborns and to meet the large tiger. The pricing ranged from $40-95 USD for about an hour of fun.

First Allyson and I went to feed the medium sized tigers. We had three: New York, Paris and London. Each tiger had a trainer which were young guys who made sure to stand between us and the tiger at all times. Allyson and I had heard horror stories of people sedating animals in order to have tourist play with them, but at Tiger World, these tigers really are friends. They roam freely on the grounds. The trainers were so gentle with the tigers and were great about telling us how to stand and sit and be respectful of the animals.

Afterwards we went inside and played with the two newborns, Sydney and Texas, who were 3 months old. They were so cute and literally acted like kittens. Texas actually was born with a back problem so the owner of Tiger World told us how he had to rescue him from his mother. Tigers will kill their weak or disable children because they don’t want them to be killed in the wild. So the owner explained how they are working to get Texas on a special diet to become stronger and how they are trying to fix his spine issue. These baby tigers were the sweetest! Texas even fell asleep as I was petting him 🙂

If you make it to Thailand, I strongly recommend going to Tiger World. If you want to see the animal life, please do your research and find places that help the animals and not harm because animals are our friends xo