Special Investigation: Thailand

[Cheeky Farang]

Documentary on UK TV showing the dangers and cruelty of animals in parks in Thailand, The Elephant and Tigers Shows in Pattaya, tourist are being advised to stay away from them. ( Not Good )

Thailand is one of the most popular long-haul destinations for British holidaymakers and shows featuring exotic animals like elephants and tigers are firmly on the tourist map. But how safe are they?

Andrea Taylor, a 20-year-old student nurse thought she was completely safe when she visited Nong Nooch Tropical Gardens in Pattaya in April 2000. But as she sat watching its popular elephant show, she was gored to death by a bull elephant. No action has ever been taken against Nong Nooch and the Thai government has renewed its licence to put on animal shows.

Package Holiday Undercover asked international wildlife vet Simon Adams to investigate safety at Nong Nooch to see if any lessons had be learned from Andrea’s death. The investigation revealed a catalogue of very serious dangers that could lead to death or injury. Most surprising of all, Nong Nooch was still using an adult bull elephant in its shows – exactly the sort of dangerous and unpredictable elephant, which killed Andrea.

Simon also visited a second wildlife park popular with British tourists – Sri Racha Tiger Zoo. Here he discovered unlocked cages and insecure fences that could allow the tigers to escape into the audience. And in Pattaya itself he found a starving baby elephant being touted round the city’s infamous street-front sex bars while its owner sold bananas for tourists to feed it.

Simon and Andrea’s sister Helen have reached the conclusion that the only ay to clean up places like this is for tourists to vote with their feet by staying away.

This year the famous Born Free Foundation has launched a campaign - Travellers Alert - to clean up places like these by presenting hard evidence of the way they operate to the governments which license them. You can find more details by going to: http://www.bornfree.org.uk/travellers.alert/index.html

We asked both Sri Racha and Nong Nooch for their comments on our investigation.

Sri Racha told us all their tigers are well-trained, and that in the seven years their show has been running no tiger has ever got out of its cage. As for As for cruelty, Sri Racha says it's part of a tiger's natural behaviour to jump through hoops of fire - and that none of its tigers have ever been burned during the trick.

Nong Nooch - the elephant park where Andrea Taylor tragically died - hasn’t replied.

[uncle paul]

What bargirls have to do with this i dont know. but as usual they were shown.

cant anyone ever do a prog about Thailand without showing the sex trade?

[ArtfulD]

Those parks are not somewhere I would consider going anyways. After seeing the program, the conditions are about what I would expect for somewhere like Thailand. With all the other issues to deal with (save face from), its not like animals are going to be high on a countrys agenda.

[loong]

Yes, I agree Paul

It annoyed me when they were talking about the Baby elephant in Pattaya where "Hundreds of Thai prostitutes ply their trade"

Maybe not the exact words, but why do they have to bring it up in a story about animal welfare.

Apart from that, the report was pretty spot on. The way Animals are treated in the name of entertainment is pretty disgusting

[udon]

These owners are "connected" and includes the bastard in Phuket who refuses to return the 80+ baby orangutans smuggled in from Indonesia.

As you know, if you are "connected" in LoS, you can get away with murder.

edit: Google "orangutans+thailand"

[sua yai]

The first time I came over for a holiday here, there was a baby elephant in the hotel grounds that they used to bring around the pool.

This was quite a novelty for me at the time and one evening I went to find it in the grounds. It was tethered to a tree - with barbed wire.

I caused a huge stink at reception, but was just fobbed off with "oh, they've got think skins".

I hope it's not still there.

[sriracha john]

On May 1st, a teenage worker at the zoo tragically died after being mauled by six tigers in front of more than 100 shocked tourists.

"She passed away in hospital," a spokeswoman from the Sri Racha Tiger Zoo southeast of Bangkok said, declining to elaborate on the attack that took place on Thursday. Media reports said 18-year-old Uraiwan Sansern received deep wounds and a cracked spine when she was set upon by six Bengal tigers she was handling for the benefit of tourists.

The young worker was reportedly untrained to handle the dangerous animals, and was trying to make a tiger sit for tourists by hitting it with a stick when the attack occurred.

Further bad press on other issues for the Tiger Zoo including being shut down twice for different problems:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18112

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18914

Best to avoid this place....

[thai3]

Yes, I agree Paul

It annoyed me when they were talking about the Baby elephant in Pattaya where "Hundreds of Thai prostitutes ply their trade"

Maybe not the exact words, but why do they have to bring it up in a story about animal welfare.

Apart from that, the report was pretty spot on. The way Animals are treated in the name of entertainment is pretty disgusting

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Of course slaughtering millions of animals daily to eat is considered OK but when it comes to Zoo conditions people get excited about animal welfare, weird-peter

[SiamOne]

Yes, I agree Paul

It annoyed me when they were talking about the Baby elephant in Pattaya where "Hundreds of Thai prostitutes ply their trade"

Maybe not the exact words, but why do they have to bring it up in a story about animal welfare.

Apart from that, the report was pretty spot on. The way Animals are treated in the name of entertainment is pretty disgusting

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Of course slaughtering millions of animals daily to eat is considered OK but when it comes to Zoo conditions people get excited about animal welfare, weird-peter

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

the program was about animal welfare, not vegetarianism

I also suppose that girl welfare could be considered relevant in that program, but was not reported on

[The Skipper]

"It annoyed me when they were talking about the Baby elephant in Pattaya where "Hundreds of Thai prostitutes ply their trade"

The misinformation that gets put out on these type programs is annoying. Everybody know there are thousands .......

[CarlBkk]

Yes, I agree Paul

Of course slaughtering millions of animals daily to eat is considered OK but when it comes to Zoo conditions people get excited about animal welfare, weird-peter

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There's a difference between slaughtering cattle for food and the long-term suffering of mistreated animals kept alive purely for greed. However, the slaughter process here in Asia is horrendous in itself...I had a letter in the Nation about this a few weeks ago.

The only animal park I've been to in Thailand was Suan Siam (waterpark actually, but they have an animal section). It was absolutely horrific to say the least where ragged poultry were nearly killing each other for a bit of bread dropped between the metal bars, massive overcrowding and a beautiful poor deer kept in a pit with stone walls and NO vegetation at all...just mud...all day long. That pisses me off.

If pisses me off even more when the other night I saw the owner of the park, some hi-so nose-jobbed Thai Chinese woman being asked to talk about all her business interests like she was a Goddess. The owners have serious money but do they put any towards the wellbeing of the animals?

When animals suffer here they just shrug their shoulders and say "na songsarn", move on and forget. The Thai way. Not dissimilar to when a human gets smashed up with spectators around. More power to the animal groups based here and I hope in the future they embarrass TRT into doing something. Generally foreigners care about animals and it has an effect on the country's image/tourism when they see cruelty or neglect...TRT hasn't realised that yet.

It's not just Thailand though...Indonesia, China and the Philippines are worse.

[mrbojangles]

It's not just Thailand though...Indonesia, China and the Philippines are worse.

I concur Carl.

On the program it was asking people not to go to these shows. No people, no money, close down very quickly. Simple really, my only concern would be for the welfare of the animals if this did happen. They would be just dumped and/or mis-treated even more than they are now. Which is the lesser of the two evils. One thing for sure is that these animals could never go back to the wild.

[kat]

Yeah, there's no disagreement here. It's horrendus, and I often try to figure out what to do about it. In the end, I think a real international boycott is the only way, because that has been somewhat successful in the push to institutionalize laws against child prostitution. But as we all know, child prostitution still exists, and so too will the exploitation of animals, until society is motivated to accept a different ethic.