Lions, Tigers, and Monkeys, oh my!

From the couch of Allie...

While we were in Thailand we had a lot of adventures involving animals...this is the picture recap.

This guy was pretty harmless, and great company for a sunset

When we got to Chiang Mai for our conference we met up with some friends, Lee and LeAnne, and then things got a little out of hand at a place called Tiger Kingdom.  In Thailand there are few if any liability laws so things like this can happen.....

Or this...

And of course this....for some reason Chris refused to be the inside spoon

Finally a little bit of fear shows up in the pictures

This tiger's name is Bobby, and he was rolling around on the table trying to get his bamboo play thing, we were trying not to get in his way



And always remember....

This is the lion at Tiger Kingdom, this is what it looked like right before Chris decided to give it five.

After Chris touched his paw the king of the jungle felt the need to remind Chris that he was not, in fact, a toy and so he lunged him.  Thankfully, there was a small chain link fence in the way.  whew!

Thinking that the Tiger Kingdom would be the closest we came to touching wild animals, we were more relaxed when we went to the Chiang Mai zoo.

As we approached the first real animal cage of the day (the flamingos at the entrance didn't count), I was in the back of our pack of people and I heard someone say, "See in the States, they'd never let you get this close to a hippo" and here's what happened next.

 This is LeAnne in the picture, she clearly does not watch as much Animal Planet as I do.

 This is as far out of the enclosure as Mr. (or Ms.) Hippo went, but that was more than enough for me.

Walking around the zoo we came upon a small parking lot surrounded by a wooden fence, and instead of cars....there was this guy.

And because looking is not enough, you can pay less than a dollar to feed some of the animals.  Chris and I purchased some meat on sticks and fed a panther and a leopard of some sort. 

And last but certainly not least...I have discovered that I am afraid of monkeys.

This is what happened to us when we rented a motorbike that broke down every 2 minutes, including one time directly in front of two feeding monkeys.  They sensed my fear and came after me, so I tossed a whole roll of Werther's originals at them thinking it would distract them long enough. Unfortunately the grandpa candy just provoked the rest of the monkey family to come out to investigate.

After all those animals...I sure miss Mazer and Finley.