Day 89: December 2nd: Monkey Business

We got off to an early start today, waking with Katie to see her off to school. We were efficient in getting out the door too, heading to the bus station. Once there, we clearly stated our destination of 'Lopburi', and got escorted to a bus, where we said to the attendant 'Lopburi', and it was repeated to us. We questioned the driver too, just for good measure.

The bus ride was supposed to take 3 hours, and we arrived at the terminal station about 5 minutes early, so we thought we were off to a good start. Although as a not-so-quick side note, the busses here are interesting...the drivers insist on BLASTING music, oftentimes accompanied by a video. Since the sound is so damn loud, all you can do is watch it. Today, however, a sort of variety show was on, so Karla slept through it, and I was relieved to not be subjected to bad dancing again. But by the time we got to the station, I really wished it had been Thai pop...the variety show was one of the most offensive programs I've seen in a long while. One of the scenes (by far the most extended...it was still going on when we got off the bus about 20 min after it started!) was one of a teacher welcoming a few of his new students, who were black. But as I watched more closely, saw the 'antics' of these characters, and listened to my fellow passengers in stitches, I was horrified to realize that these actors were in black-face! And actively making fun of black people. And it was so ok that no one on the bus (except myself...Karla was still snoozing) even thought something could potentially be wrong here. Needless to say, I was relieved to get off that bus.

We walked up to a taxi stand to ask how to get where we were going. After more than 5 minutes of repeating the name of the destination over and over again and talking to one of their friends on the phone who claimed to speak English, we gave up. Then it occurred to me that we may not in fact be where we thought we were. That is to say, if the taxi drivers and their English-speaking friend did not recognize the map that we showed them and did not recognized our butchered version of the Thai name, maybe we weren't in Lopburi at all.

So we walked back into the station, seeing on a sign that confirmed my hunch was correct. We were in a place called Saraburi. Luckily we were able to locate it on our Thailand map and realized that we were less than an hour from Lopburi, so we grabbed some snacks and hopped back on the bus.

45 minutes later, I woke Karla up upon seeing a sign for Lopburi and recognizing the traffic circle from the map. So we got up, asked the attendant if we were in Lopburi, and got off the bus when we received her affirmation. But I totally jumped the gun in my haste to get there - who would've thought there are 2 giant traffic circles in Lopburi!? - and we ended up walking about a kilometer to get to the bus station. Oh well. At least we saw some giant statues of monkeys! And some smaller ones drinking out of bottles and peeling bananas.

We verified that there was in fact a bus back to Suphanburi tonight, then took a public taxi/shuttle to the first temple, called Prang Sam Yot. It was a cool remnant of first a Hindu, then a Buddhist temple, and the ruins were literally crawling with monkeys (why Lopburi is the monkey city)! These small creatures (gibbons to be precise) clung to every brick, tumbled on every inch of the grass, slept in all the shade that these great ruins provided, and tried to jump on anyone who looked like they had a tasty snack on them. It was incredible.

But they were aggressive. On jumped on Karla as we were walking in and I thought perhaps it was because she was carrying a shiny object (the camera). But then inside the temple grounds, one leaped onto my back while I was watching her take pictures! They're creepy little devils.

We later saw people feeding them, which explains why they're so aggressive. The temple had seeds that the grounds keeper trys to sell to tourists for the monkeys. Someone didn't really think that all the way through...

We went inside the temple (mercifully monkey-free!) and felt a bit like zoo animals because the gibbons were hanging onto the bars on all sides of us, staring. They're eerie-looking up close.

We wanted to go to a palace museum next, but it was closed, so we walked through the closing market (which smelled like the end of the day...not good when we're talking about meat and fish), and tried to go into a temple. Well luck still wasn't on our side. We walked in and were greeted by a very big dog in a sweater. We didn't approach him of course, but he seemed friendly, so we kept walking. But as we walked closer, a street dog at the entrance to the building started to bark and growl. All of a sudden 10 more doggy-voices chimed in, and a pack of large rough-looking dogs appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Karla and I backed away slowly and escaped without harm.

We realized that must have been the back entrance when we saw a giant sign for the temple a little further down the street. We looked at the exterior of the Wat Sao Thong Thong (I kid you not), but it was closed so we couldn't go in.

We stumbled across more ruins on the other side of the street, and spent the remainder of our time there ruin-hopping and eating. But it seemed like the animals were out to get me! At one of the ruins, I nearly stepped on the decaying carcass of a dead cat (with the fur still on!). It was appalling. I then bought a couple of roasted bananas and was carrying the remaining half of one in my hand. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I felt a hand in mine and then the plastic bag which contained the banana was gone. I shrieked - I know, I know...I'm not proud of my reaction- and looked down. In front of me, a medium-sized gibbon stared me down before deftly taking the stick out of the bag, ripping open the plastic and popping what was left of MY snack into his mouth. The little jerk. Karla said he literally flew at me from behind (and was secretly very impressed). At least he was agile.

My last animal encounter occurred when crossing the railroad tracks to get to some more ruins...I looked down and saw a large rat about the size of my foot, dead on its back with its little teeth sticking out. Needless to say, I'll be dreaming of rats tonight.

Rodents and other pests aside, we ended on a good note, taking a bicycle rickshaw back to the station in time for our bus. We had to switch busses in Ang Thong, but our attendant was super nice and made sure that we got on the correct bus to take us back to Suphanburi. If there was a gold medal in carrying on conversations using only pantomime and proper nouns, we'd be sure to receive it. Cum laude.

We got back to Katie's and found her flopped on her bed watching 'Harry Potter' on TV. It was a delightful treat to end our day in what now feels like home with dinner and a movie!
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