Hey, Hey it's the monkeys!
Text written in: English
After experiencing the delights of Ayuthaya for a week and getting
over our New Year Day hangover on the 2nd January we reluctantly said
goodbye to our lovely guesthouse and owner. We took
breakfast on the balcony one last time and then set about ordering a
tuk-tuk to take us to Ayuthaya train station. This was a new
experience for us as before now we had only taken buses to get from
city to city, however the easiest and quickest route to our next stop,
the little town of Lopburi, was by train. The train station
was only 10 minutes away and our guesthouse owner had already given us
the time of the next train as well as bartering the price with the
tuk-tuk driver. So all we had to do was get in the tuk-tuk,
buy a ticket and wait for the train, it was as simple as
that. The only downside, as I saw it then, was that we were
only able to travel third class as this was the only class available on
this particular route. However, as it turns out the Thai's
idea of third class is a lot more comfortable than South Eastern
Trains (in England) idea of second class.
Our train
arrived at 1pm on the dot; every experience we've had with travelling
in this country has been on time and has been extremely
comfortable. This was no exception. Third class
consists of a large carriage filled with wooden benches either side of
the aisle, the benches are huge and can fit two people comfortably,
even three people at a push. There is so much leg room which
is a relief for someone like me and the open windows provide constant
ventilation, there is even a big metal shutter available for when the
sun gets too fierce. The train ride lasted all of 70 minutes
and we arrived in Lopburi a little after 2pm, we were greeted by the
usual furor of Saamlaw drivers and procured two (they could only fit
one person at a time) to take us to our pre-booked
accommodation. Accommodation in Lopburi is scarce to say
the least, we had little option but to book ourselves into a hotel
(Nett Hotel) for a couple of nights but at least it had a hot shower
with air-con.
Arriving at our hotel we were met and
helped with our luggage to the room. Hmmm. Not
the nicest room we've stayed in. There was an instant whiff
of must in the air and the room was quite grubby, we had come to expect
to hit this sort of place sooner than later but had been lucky up
to now with our choice. This however was of a different
breed, it said to us quite clearly that it was here to fleece the
farang of as much money for as little as possible. We made
do though, after all we're not going to hang around the hotel room for
long as we have things to see and things to do. Yeah
right. Lopburi, as we were warned, is not exactly famed for
it's buzzing nightlife. Or daylife as it happens. The only
thing this place has got going for it is 1) it's temples; which are
interesting but if you've been to Ayuthaya they're unimpressive in
comparison and 2) Monkeys! Yes, monkeys! The
place is littered with them. They're on the rooftops, on the
cars, in your face, in the shops, up the drainpipe and all over the
temples.
In fact one temple, Prang Sam Yot, acts as
a home to them. Prang Sam Yot is a Hindu turned-Buddhist temple,
originally the three towers symbolised the Hindu Trimurti of Shiva,
Vishnu and Brahma. To be honest it was nothing special,
apart from the fact that it was covered, and we mean covered, in
monkeys. It seemed that the tourists at the temple had only
come for the monkeys, many of them were letting them crawl all over
them. One Japanese woman had three on her head before they started to
get a bit too boisterous for her and began to pull at her hair and
clothes. More fool her. Most of these monkeys
looked far from cute and quite a few were fat from tourist hand outs,
some looked outright vicious and we're turning on each other over food
and territory. Lindsey didn't look too happy at me walking
amongst them all. However it was an amazing sight, we've
never seen so many monkeys in all our lives and we couldn't really
accept that we were amongst them all. Watching them swing
from cable wire to cable wire will stay burned in my memory for
the rest of my days.
After the monkey temple, as it
shall always be called, we took a walk around some of the other sights,
not that there were many and finished the night at a nice restaurant
before heading for bed. It was far from a comfortable night
and in the early hours we planned our escape route, we had originally
planned two days here before heading to Phitsanulok but what was the
point in hanging around when we had seen everything and hated our
room? So we headed on back to the train station and promptly
booked ourselves onto the 9:39pm sleeper train to Chiang Mai, which
would drop us off at Phitsanulok. So that was our adventure
in Lopburi, if you could call it that. We would only ever
recommend this place as a day trip from Ayuthaya because the monkeys
alone make it worth coming to.
So at 9pm that night
(3rd January) we walked to the train station excited at the prospect of
hitting the northern end of Thailand.
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(7) (Chilly Casey)
So despite the disadvantage of having to take the 5 hr train back to BKK, and some...
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Entry 11 of 53 
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