Pray for Mojo...

Lopburi

Nov 24-25

This past weekend, we decided to go to Lopburi for the annual Monkey festival. Lopburi is known for the monkeys that hangout in the city, and every year, they put on a Monkey Festival in November. We decided this would be fun to check out. 

We left Phra Pradaeng Saturday morning around 11:00 am – we had decided that we just wanted to spend the one night in Lopburi. We took a taxi to the Mo Chit (or northern) bus station, where we met with Karima. There was a large anti-government protest taking place in Bangkok on Saturday, so we were worried about traffic. Side note: the protest was nothing to be concerned about. The current Prime Minister of Thailand is Yingluck Shinawatra. The controversy that surrounds her is based on that her brother is the deposed Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in 2006 for corruption and abuse of power by a military coup. Although he is living in self-imposed exile, many believe he still controls the party his sister leads. By the way, Yinglucl Shinawatra was democratically elected in 2011, by a large majority. So that was the main reason for the protest, and that the government has been ignoring insults to the monarchy. But, despite all that, the ride went smoothly, and took a lot less time than we thought! 

The bus station was massive: it reminded me more of an airport than a bus terminal. There were over 100 booths to buy tickets, and you can only buy tickets for certain locations at certain booths. We eventually found the right booth to buy our tickets, and we made our way to our platform. This was my first time taking one of the government, or big, buses (basically the same size as a greyhound). After a bit of waiting (things generally don’t leave on time in Thailand), we were on our way. The ride there took a LOOOONG time – longer than the 3 hours it was supposed to. I think it took more like 4.5 – we made lots of stops and waited around a lot.

We eventually arrived in Lopburi – the plan was to stay a hotel a little ways away, and we didn’t know how to get there. Erin called the hotel, and they sent one someone to meet us, which was very kind of them! The man from the hotel told a sawng-tao driver where to take us, and paid for our trip. The name of the hotel was the Lopburi Residence Hotel, and it was quite nice and very reasonably priced. We paid 600B for a room (300B per person), which included the use of the pool, air-conditioning, and breakfast in the morning. As far as we could tell, all the other guests were Thai. We decided to go for a swim – the pool was quite nice but chilly!

We then made out way into town to find a place to get dinner and drinks. We stopped on the way at a general store and bought some beer for the walk. The lady gave us straws with our beer, so we decided to use them. It wasn’t so bad! It took us quite a while to walk into town (about 45 mins I think), but we eventually made it. We stopped at the 7-11 for more beer, and then wandered around in search of a restaurant. While we were wondering, we had our first monkey sighting – they were eating garbage that was put out on the road. We ate dinner, got more beer, then went to the local bar. We saw many other people from OEG, which was nice! Most of the OEGers ended up at the bar, which I think was the only bar open at the time. We also talked to some French tourists, and I attempted to speak French. Winning... they said we spoke well but I suspect they were lying. But we had a good time at the bar!

We left around 12:30am I think, and discovered that the sawng-taos and taxis had stopped running. So we started to walk back to the hotel. Laura and Anna managed to flag down a random Thai driver, who said we would drive us. In other words, we hitchhiked. Winning... But the driver was really nice. He took us to the bus station, which was close to our hotel. We walked the rest of the way. At this point, I had developed some unfortunate hiccoughs, and spent most of the walk back laughing, snorting, and hiccoughing. Karima tried to scare me at one point, but all that accomplished was I stumbled and broke my flip-flop. I did the zombie-walk for a while (dragging my foot in an attempt to keep my flip-flop on) but eventually gave up on that. Fortunately, we were close to the hotel.

The next day, Karima and I slept in until 8:30am, and went for breakfast. We ate lots of toast and pineapple. I may break down at one point and buy a toaster, but I’m holding out for now. But I love toast... Mmmm. Around 11:30am, we all headed into town to see the Monkey Festival. On the way, we stopped at the bus station to try and buy our ticket, but there was only one big bus leaving for Bangkok that day... So we decided to take a mini-van/bus from town.  The Monkey Festival took place at the Khmer ruins in the middle of town, called Prang Sam Yot. There was an elaborate display of fruit laid out, as well as many hundreds of stuffed monkeys. It was neat to see the monkeys – but you only think they’re cute for about 2 minutes. Then they start stealing your food, biting, and jumping on you. So the novelty of them wears off pretty soon. One person we know from OEG was bitten pretty badly, and had to go get rabies shots. I didn’t want to have to do anything like that, so I didn’t want any monkeys to climb on me. One jumped on my backpack, but jumped off pretty quickly.

After we had had enough of the monkeys, we had lunch – delicious omelette from a small local restaurant. Some OEGers told us about these really nice sunflower fields a bit out of town we could check out. We didn’t want to leave just yet, so we decided to go. To get there, you basically have to find someone with a truck to drive you. We walked all around, but couldn’t find anyone who would charge a reasonable price. We were about to give up, but we found a motorcycle-taxi driver who also apparently drove a truck. So we piled into the back of his truck – it was kind of set up as a sawng-tao, with 2 benches and a covering. The drive took about half an hour, I think, and it was a lovely ride. We eventually turned off the main road, and just when we thought these fields were a figment of someone’s imagination, we arrived. The fields were gorgeous – sunflowers are probably my favourite flower. They are so happy! The fields were full of them, with mountains in the background. After we had our fill, we scraped the mud off our shoes with sticks (channelling our inner monkey), climbed back into the truck, and went back to town. We decided we were ready to leave, so we hopped onto a mini-van, and were on our way back to town.

The ride back to Bangkok was a lot shorter than the way there, and I slept most of the time. We were dropped off at Victory Monument, and ate at the McDonalds in a nearby mall. I don’t think I can eat McDonalds – it was iffy back home to start with, but here, since I only eat Thai food, it’s even worse. It gave me pretty bad stomach cramps. But I survived. We managed to catch a taxi, but not until after the rain started... Now, if you are a family member, you must promise me you will not freak out. We were near our apartment, and our driver stopped abruptly. I was just looking to see what was ahead, when WHAM! We were rear-ended quite forcefully by another taxi. We were all fine, but the vehicle was no longer drive-able as the bumper was dragging. The entire back was completely crunched. We found another taxi to take us the rest of the way – I wondered if we should stay as witnesses, but we likely wouldn’t be able to communicate/be any use. And it was pretty clear what happened... We made it the rest of the way home without incident. And so ended our fairly eventful weekend!