Thailand's Tiger Temple

Thailand's Tiger Temple.  Gulf News designer Guillermo Munro takes us on a tour of Thailand's Tiger Temple. See more at: http://gulfnews.com/gntv

Transcript

00:00The tiger temple is about 34 kilometers outside of Kachanamburi.

00:20It's hidden deep in forest land away from Thailand's cities.

00:23The temple is famous for its monks who have been looking after orphan tigers for years

00:27now.

00:28As an artist, I've always been interested in painting tigers, and spending time up close

00:33and personal with these animals was an incredible experience.

00:36Many of the tigers here are hand-reared from as young as three weeks.

00:41Visitors to the temple can bottle-feed the youngest ones.

00:43The tigers here appear to be calm and relaxed.

00:46Last year, 20 new cubs were born in captivity.

00:49The monks say this shows that they are happy and well-fed.

00:52Even though these are incredibly powerful animals, I never felt any discomfort interacting

00:57with them.

00:58The cats here are Indo-Chinese and are endangered like all tigers around the world.

01:03One issue hanging over the temple has been whether these tigers will be reintroduced

01:07back into the wild.

01:08It's a big problem as monks struggle to cope with the growing number of tigers.

01:12For now, they aim to build a larger tiger sanctuary, which would allow the animals to

01:17live in an almost natural environment all day long.

01:20Guillermo Munro, Gulf News.

01:28For more UN videos visit www.un.org