Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Thailand: Lopburi

From Ayuthuya we took another 3rd class train ride to get to Lopburi. Toolmans seat squab hadn't been fastened to the legs, so as he adjusted himself sitting down, the whole seat slid off its legs and he half fell off. Princess couldn't stop laughing, but it wasn't that funny... was it ?

We found some suitable accommodation, and settled in for the night. Bright and early next morning we went and looked at some of the wats (temples) and ruins on foot. No scooter this time, as Lopburi is quite compact.

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As always, it is hard to get all the names of these sites correct. There are a half dozen sites, and they are quite sprawling.

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The ruins are similar to Ayuthuya - without their front facade, their age difference is not readily apparent to us lay persons. After a look around, we headed towards the area inhabited by the monkeys.

The monkeys sleep in a (current, upkept) Wat, and in the morning they cross the road to a ruins site and cause havoc. There is also a splinter group (apparently led by a half blind monkey) that lurk on the streets and surroundings nearby.

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This is their daytime haunt, and is where we went in to feed the monkeys - a kind of inside-out feeding zoo!

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We had a bag of seeds to feed them. They put their hands thru the bars and will snatch any food that gets close. Remember these are wild animals, so we didn't expect them to be polite. Princess got a bunch of her hair ripped out by a particularly greedy, bulshy one!

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The young ones are still very cute, and are reasonably friendly.

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Oh, and did we mention that there are LOTS of them? We got given a stick just in case they got uppity...

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..but they thought it was a game! Toolman was trying to push a little one that jumped on Princess and another just jumped on the stick! He started spinning them to try and fling them off, and it ended up like a Toolman-carnival ride. A few joined in, and they were trying to climb up the stick as he tried to spin fast enough to hurl them off! We got our shots, but still don't want or need monkey bites.

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This is them crossing road from their night spot to their daytime one.

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One on a car just being annoying.

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lots.. How many monkeys can you see in this picture?

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They are everywhere! They were pretty entertaining though, and Lopburi is well worth a visit.

Unfortunately at some point during the day Toolman managed to lose our Tiki purse (and the cash inside) while sitting in an iCafe. After much searching we had to declare it gone. We just hope that some deserving person found it! Thankfully it only had about NZ$60 in it, so the biggest loss was the cool purse itself - sorry Shannon.

That night it was time to catch the 8pm night train to Chiang Mai...

1 comment:

Mechanical Marksy said...

holy cow thats a but load of monkies...

Look at them. Anti-social behaviour. Just sitting around, causing mischief and listening to their music... they all need to be locked up in a cage! They should be trying to earn a living like the rest of us!