Bua Noi has spent decades in a cage in a decaying Bangkok shopping mall. Her owner says is she too old to be transferred to a sanctuary but activists disagree
Holding a fist full of green beans, Bua Noi stares through the iron bars and glass of her home at the visitors busy taking pictures of Bangkok’s controversial “shopping mall gorilla”. To their dismay, the animal fondly known as King Kong soon saunters away from the viewing window, past the hanging tyre to the back of her sparse enclosure.
“She’s sitting there dying of boredom,” says Edwin Wiek, founder of Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand.
