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| monkeys: Lopburi's pigeons |
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| so this is what it feels like to be inside of a zoo |
The minibus picked us up at my parent's hotel. Upon hopping into the van, we were not only greeted our minibus driver's entire family (2 adorable young boys and his wife), but also with a large TV that they found the perfect thing to put on: Gangnam Style, a parody of Gangnam Style, and various Lady Gaga music videos.
After about 45 minutes of listening to all the hits, we arrived in central Lopburi. I had warned my family that I had heard there were monkeys everywhere. My sister said, "monkeys in Lopburi are just like pigeons in the United States." I laughed this off and said of course not, we have pigeons in Thailand and that there wouldn't be THAT many monkeys.
The first monkey spotting in Lopburi of course was monkeys on the phone lines. "SEE! They are like pigeons!" As funny as this was at the time, we found out that monkeys in Lopburi are not like pigeons; they actually want to play with you. After I got touched and chased down the street by a monkey, we thought we would be safer in the temple ruins. Oh so wrong. Upon buying our tickets, we noticed a woman standing with a slingshot at the entrance. She wasn't actually doing anything, so we proceeded to check out the temple despite the monkeys we saw running around the grounds. Rounding a corner we noticed dozens of monkeys seeking refuge in the shade and licking the walls and the buddha that we wanted to take a picture of. We tried to suck up our fear of being attacked by monkeys and posed for an adorable girls picture, only to be interrupted by a shrill scream from Marisa, who felt tiny little furry hands grab her around the waist. As we went to seek refuge inside of the temple, we saw the woman with the slingshot running over--too little too late, lady. As safe as we felt inside of the temple, which had a cast iron door on it and barred windows to keep the monkeys out, we also felt as if we were in a zoo, as the monkeys played on the bars and stared at us until we built up the courage to leave the temple and cross the busy street and run back into our minibus, which our Thai family was also waiting at eager to leave.
Our next stop was one of the famed Lopburi sunflower fields. I love sunflowers and really enjoyed frolicking through the fields. We were quite amused by one of the little boys that accompanied us on our trip, as he would not stop taking pictures of us. At one point we were standing on a platform overlooking the field, and invited him to join us. Instead of climbing up on the platform beside us, he began snapping pictures of us. As we were loading back onto the bus to go to our next destination, he revealed the crown jewel of his pictures: my dad's butt. We all had a good laugh and appreciated that no matter what the language, a dad's butt is funny and meant to be made fun of.
Our next stop was lunch. We pulled off to a crowded restaurant close to the sunflower field. It was a typical Thai style restaurant: open-air, long tables, and whole fish served and shared. We were thankful that our restaurant had an English menu with Thai translations. Unfortunately for us, none of the translations matched, no one in the restaurant spoke a word of English, and we ended up getting nothing that we ordered. It was a typical Thai experience: everyone in the restaurant freaking out about every little thing we said, even if it was in Thai, eating mystery foods, and having no idea what was going to come next. It was quite the exhausting, yet purely authentic, Thai experience for my family their first day in Thailand.
Our last stop was the dam, which was a Thai tourist attraction, and quite beautiful, but also incredibly boring. We walked around, exhausted from our chaotic and frustrating lunch, and admired the beautiful lake with the mountains in the back. After our brief stroll, we found our Thai family and made our way back to Ayutthaya.
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| me taking a picture of the little boy taking a picture of us. this was pre-booty shot |
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