Some things just ain’t for sale
Today I am asked my opinion on the council decision to refuse Donald Trump permission to build a large hotel and golf complex on the Menie estate which encompasses a large stretch of coastline of North East Scotland.
I wish to respond by way of a poem.
There are not many places left untouched here now
The sea has become our regional cash cow
As I look out to the structures that pay my mortgage
I can’t complain or join in the environmental scrummage
When others rail against the system of fossil fuel dependence
We Scots rely on oil for more than running our car engines
But the Menie beach saga is a different thing
Sometimes life is more important than a cash register ring
A well kept secret; for legions of sunbathers just too damn cold
Unsuitable for the holiday industry to take hold
The indigenous inhabitants of that beach who cannot speak
Sat silent in nests as Trump tried to wet his beak
So it was up to us to push their cause
And protect this beautiful area from greedy paws
For those who complain that we’ve shot ourselves in the foot
Is a few hundred minimum wages jobs really that much loot?
Surely the conservation of an area with rare wildlife and serenity
Is a true badge of our region’s continued prosperity
If we let it be destroyed for a bunch of greenbacks
You can bet, when it’s all spent, there’ll be no going back
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. You know mine. Regardless, please register which ever one is your own in our local newspaper poll here.
Raaaaarrrrr!
It’s the last day in Kanchanaburi and we are on the trip which really led us to this part of the world in the first place.
Last year my pal Jonny came back from Thailand with hundreds of photos of him sitting with a tiger lolling about his lap. Within a day of seeing these photos I had scheduled a trip to The Tiger Monastery on our Thailand itinerary. The deal is here at the Tiger Sanctuary is that these are tigers that have been rescued. They’ve maybe been rescued from illegal poachers,found injured or are cubs found abandoned after a mother has been killed. They are looked after by a group of Buddhist monks and rangers. Most have been reared from cubs in the sanctuary to adulthood.
Any tiger cubs born in the sanctuary are not allowed contact with the visitors as they are released back into the wild as soon as they are able to fend for themselves. At the moment there are only thought to be about 250 tigers in Thailand. Apparently a lot of the poaching (read, “killing”) is for the Chinese medicine market, where a tiger’s penis can fetch thousands of dollars as it is believed to have virility enhancing powers, if you know what I mean. Get some bloody Viagra over to Beijing quick!
My boy and a real tiger…..
Oh my God, someone’s put my girl onto a real tiger’s belly…..
You don’t really need anything more do you?
Look at my boy rolling about with a fully grown tiger! Look at my girl sitting on a tiger’s belly! The chief monk made a bee-line for her, and took her straight over to meet the tigers. Mum and Dad had to wait in line with all the other Muggles. Mum and Dad look on, terrified. Eve’s thoughts on the matter?
“The tiger was itchy.”By comparison, look at John and I tentatively touching a tiger…..
I really wanted to touch its head but they wouldn’t let me. Something to do with the big teeth, I think.
In reality you only got about two seconds with any of the tigers. The monks or rangers chaperone you and are understandably nervous as hell. You only get enough time to pose with the tiger as your photo is taken. Of course, you also have to sign a document on the way in that more or less says, “Tigers may eat you, don’t hold us responsible. You went in of your own free will.”
No matter how tame these beasts seem to be, you’d best never forget that tigers are wild animals. They have a tendency to take your face off.
The tigers are kept in large cages and are trotted out once a day for about an hour to see the visitors, and you can get a chance to lead the tamest one (seen below) back to her pen.
This is the first tiger reared from cub to adulthood in the Monastery
I was slightly disappointed you didn’t get more time with the beasts but there were about fifty people there. It was great just to watch them, though. I’ve got more photos of the tigers than my own kids.
But look at this…this is one of the monks being asked for some cat food (a cooked chicken) by doing the same thing our cat Harleyboy does when he’s hungry…by being a big sook. This enormous beast rubbed its face up against the monk’s like a big moggy. This photo kind of captures it.
Later on we share our pickup truck back to Kanchanaburi with a London backpacking couple of physiotherapists called Laura and Dan and a German couple called Melanie and Robert. They are all staying at the Apple Guest house where we had planned to eat for our last night.
The Apple runs a Thai cooking school and food is supposed to be great. So that night we head down and meet up with our fellow tiger fanciers. We have a great night and I even speak a smidge of German again. Little point other than some practice for me, as Melanie’s English is as good as mine, but the two of them seem to like the fact that I give it a go.
So goodbye Kanchanaburi . Quite possibly the best two days of the trip so far.
Tomorrow we’re off back to Bangkok and one night of extreme luxury in the Davis Hotel before heading home….Oh and it just happens to be “Songkran”, Thailand’s New Year.
Raaaaarrrrr!
It’s the last day in Kanchanaburi and we are on the trip which really led us to this part of the world in the first place.
Last year my pal Jonny came back from Thailand with hundreds of photos of him sitting with a tiger lolling about his lap. Within a day of seeing these photos I had scheduled a trip to The Tiger Monastery on our Thailand itinerary. The deal is here at the Tiger Sanctuary is that these are tigers that have been rescued. They’ve maybe been rescued from illegal poachers,found injured or are cubs found abandoned after a mother has been killed. They are looked after by a group of Buddhist monks and rangers. Most have been reared from cubs in the sanctuary to adulthood.
Any tiger cubs born in the sanctuary are not allowed contact with the visitors as they are released back into the wild as soon as they are able to fend for themselves. At the moment there are only thought to be about 250 tigers in Thailand. Apparently a lot of the poaching (read, “killing”) is for the Chinese medicine market, where a tiger’s penis can fetch thousands of dollars as it is believed to have virility enhancing powers, if you know what I mean. Get some bloody Viagra over to Beijing quick!
My boy and a real tiger…..
Oh my God, someone’s put my girl onto a real tiger’s belly…..
You don’t really need anything more do you?
Look at my boy rolling about with a fully grown tiger! Look at my girl sitting on a tiger’s belly! The chief monk made a bee-line for her, and took her straight over to meet the tigers. Mum and Dad had to wait in line with all the other Muggles. Mum and Dad look on, terrified. Eve’s thoughts on the matter?
“The tiger was itchy.”By comparison, look at John and I tentatively touching a tiger…..
I really wanted to touch its head but they wouldn’t let me. Something to do with the big teeth, I think.
In reality you only got about two seconds with any of the tigers. The monks or rangers chaperone you and are understandably nervous as hell. You only get enough time to pose with the tiger as your photo is taken. Of course, you also have to sign a document on the way in that more or less says, “Tigers may eat you, don’t hold us responsible. You went in of your own free will.”
No matter how tame these beasts seem to be, you’d best never forget that tigers are wild animals. They have a tendency to take your face off.
The tigers are kept in large cages and are trotted out once a day for about an hour to see the visitors, and you can get a chance to lead the tamest one (seen below) back to her pen.
This is the first tiger reared from cub to adulthood in the Monastery
I was slightly disappointed you didn’t get more time with the beasts but there were about fifty people there. It was great just to watch them, though. I’ve got more photos of the tigers than my own kids.
But look at this…this is one of the monks being asked for some cat food (a cooked chicken) by doing the same thing our cat Harleyboy does when he’s hungry…by being a big sook. This enormous beast rubbed its face up against the monk’s like a big moggy. This photo kind of captures it.
Later on we share our pickup truck back to Kanchanaburi with a London backpacking couple of physiotherapists called Laura and Dan and a German couple called Melanie and Robert. They are all staying at the Apple Guest house where we had planned to eat for our last night.
The Apple runs a Thai cooking school and food is supposed to be great. So that night we head down and meet up with our fellow tiger fanciers. We have a great night and I even speak a smidge of German again. Little point other than some practice for me, as Melanie’s English is as good as mine, but the two of them seem to like the fact that I give it a go.
So goodbye Kanchanaburi . Quite possibly the best two days of the trip so far.
Tomorrow we’re off back to Bangkok and one night of extreme luxury in the Davis Hotel before heading home….Oh and it just happens to be “Songkran”, Thailand’s New Year.
The Swiss Family Martin
The war aspect of Kanchanaburi is everywhere, and I suspect that the bridge and the railway are the reason why a lot of Europeans come here. However the area surrounding Kanchanaburi is also a national park and has some amazing scenery and areas of natural beauty.
We’re not normally ones for organised trips but we went on a cracker of one on day two of our stay here. First of to Erawan National Park with it’s seven waterfalls.
The Erawan park rangers have cottoned on to something- tourists leave rubbish. I have ranted about this in the past. So you are only allowed to take drinking water into the park, and you must check in your bottles, sign for them and leave a deposit. Each bottle is numbered, so they can check discarded bottles against names, and presumably find you wherever you are hiding and then beat you to death with them.
We are told by our guide Mu Mu, an extremely confident but fast and impenetrable English speaker, that we are welcome to swim in the pools of Erawan and that the little fish will give you a firm Thai massage. In actual fact, the buggers bite you, constantly and are not afraid of splashing or shrieking, despite my efforts to frighten them off.
I adopt the technique of swimming like a Olympic champion to outrun the little beasts but they are everywhere and to be frank, they are not little. It seems weird that the other day I was snorkelling in amongst the beautiful Koh Phi Phi Nemos and trying to touch them, but now I am frantically swatting away the biting brown leviathans of Erawan and shrieking like a girl.
Anyway here’s a pic of what I suspect is Louis’s highlight of his holiday…sliding down a natural rock flume like a good ‘un.
Safe to say eve didn’t go in any of the pools and whined the whole time, asking where lunch was and wanting to go home. She likes a good dash of ceramic tile and chlorine with her swimming water.
Next up, we go for a walk with some elephants. Here we are with Bunta (22 years old) and Seesaw.
Will work for bananas.
Unlike our previous Elephant walk on our Sri Lanka trip we were able to send some time with our Elephants afterwards. Here’s me speaking to Bunta and apologising for running out of bananas and making her walk in the hot sun.
And we saw one of the babies, who snotted all over my white trousers and rooted about my person for anything edible.
Our mahout was a cheeky one too. He ate two of the bananas meant for the elephant.
Next up we went rafting which was fantastic.(No pics, unfortunately.) With life jackets on, Mum, if you’re reading… Louis and John jumped off the the raft and swam most of the way downstream. John in River swimming shocker. See, I told you it was a ll a bluff..he was like flipping Tarzan. And I went in fully clothed but hung onto then raft so that I could be in earshot of Eve’s whining lunch enquriry and pleading to go home.
One of the other rafts had an unwelcome visitor in the form of a water snake. A deadly water snake. We might not have been so keen to jump in the River had we known. Yikes!
The Swiss Family Martin
The war aspect of Kanchanaburi is everywhere, and I suspect that the bridge and the railway are the reason why a lot of Europeans come here. However the area surrounding Kanchanaburi is also a national park and has some amazing scenery and areas of natural beauty.
We’re not normally ones for organised trips but we went on a cracker of one on day two of our stay here. First of to Erawan National Park with it’s seven waterfalls.
The Erawan park rangers have cottoned on to something- tourists leave rubbish. I have ranted about this in the past. So you are only allowed to take drinking water into the park, and you must check in your bottles, sign for them and leave a deposit. Each bottle is numbered, so they can check discarded bottles against names, and presumably find you wherever you are hiding and then beat you to death with them.
We are told by our guide Mu Mu, an extremely confident but fast and impenetrable English speaker, that we are welcome to swim in the pools of Erawan and that the little fish will give you a firm Thai massage. In actual fact, the buggers bite you, constantly and are not afraid of splashing or shrieking, despite my efforts to frighten them off.
I adopt the technique of swimming like a Olympic champion to outrun the little beasts but they are everywhere and to be frank, they are not little. It seems weird that the other day I was snorkelling in amongst the beautiful Koh Phi Phi Nemos and trying to touch them, but now I am frantically swatting away the biting brown leviathans of Erawan and shrieking like a girl.
Anyway here’s a pic of what I suspect is Louis’s highlight of his holiday…sliding down a natural rock flume like a good ‘un.
Safe to say eve didn’t go in any of the pools and whined the whole time, asking where lunch was and wanting to go home. She likes a good dash of ceramic tile and chlorine with her swimming water.
Next up, we go for a walk with some elephants. Here we are with Bunta (22 years old) and Seesaw.
Will work for bananas.
Unlike our previous Elephant walk on our Sri Lanka trip we were able to send some time with our Elephants afterwards. Here’s me speaking to Bunta and apologising for running out of bananas and making her walk in the hot sun.
And we saw one of the babies, who snotted all over my white trousers and rooted about my person for anything edible.
Our mahout was a cheeky one too. He ate two of the bananas meant for the elephant.
Next up we went rafting which was fantastic.(No pics, unfortunately.) With life jackets on, Mum, if you’re reading… Louis and John jumped off the the raft and swam most of the way downstream. John in River swimming shocker. See, I told you it was a ll a bluff..he was like flipping Tarzan. And I went in fully clothed but hung onto then raft so that I could be in earshot of Eve’s whining lunch enquriry and pleading to go home.
One of the other rafts had an unwelcome visitor in the form of a water snake. A deadly water snake. We might not have been so keen to jump in the River had we known. Yikes!
