Tiger time and across the river Kwai

Woke up real early to head of for my first little Thailand adventure. It took about two hours to get up to the river Kwai and we started off with the Death railway memory museum. Quite a dark name and the information about it all was pretty gruesome. I must admit I knew very little about the whole thing apart from that a lot of prisoners of war were made to build the thing the museum wised me up. The japanese had intention of getting a supply route up to China across Singapoore but due to the Allied forces bombing the sea at such frequency it was decided to build a railway from Thailand up trough Burma instead. Initially the POW were treated ok but as the war deterioated for the Japanese so did the situation in the camp. Malnutrition and disease spread trough the camps and the bad working conditions took an awful amount of lives. Walking across the grave yard what struck me hardest was they all were so young. Most were between twenty to twenty five years old.
Time for some more upbeat stuff and we all got on the bus and headed for the Temple of the Tigers.
The first thing I saw when getting there was wild horses, buffalo's and birds walking around as they pleased. A moment later we came up to the tigers and it was quite a surreal to see the big cats in the flesh.
Even though they had a minder we were told to keep the distance until nine of the tigers were taken down to the water whole. There was one remaining that we walked down with and handed over our cameras to get out pictures taken while gently putting our hands on their back. My turn came and the tiger decided to spray me with tiger stuff. Now I'm sure that it means "piss off" in most cultures but I decided he just wanted to be friendly and I will from now on consider that "The lucky shirt" regardless of what anyone says :)
Once down to the water whole we were led in one by one and allowed to tuch the big beasts. I must say that it was an incredible feeling being amongst them all and quite scare as well regrdless of if the minders were there or not. You don't mess with all those kilos of predator!
After that it was back to the hotell and a beer to celebrate that I've done the right thing about the excursions. Viva la tigre!