Ruins, Monkeys, and Public Transportation

I got to see a little more of Thailand this weekend, slowly but surely sights are being checked off my list. Nathan, Emily, and I left at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday for our little adventure to Ayutthaya and Lopburi. Turns out there was not a single taxi in our village and because we don't know Thai we couldn't call one. This meant we walked about a mile before we were finally picked up! We had a long series of transportation that morning before we reached our destination, Ayutthaya. We took a taxi, a wan (van), the skytrain, the metro, and a train. We met two friends, Jenny and Leora, at the train station and because of our morning walk we were behind schedule. This meant Nathan, Emily, and I were sprinting through the metro station to our train. It must have been a pretty fun sight! It paid off though because we made our train and were soon on our way.

Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand until it was destroyed by the Burmese army in 1767. Today the ruins are scattered throughout a modern city and attract a lot of tourists to the area. We didn't do a lot of research on the area before exploring the city which lead us to a lot of dead end walking paths. The city was hard to navigate, but once we got ourselves in the right area we began exploring the ruins. They were very beautiful, but lacked information. A lot of tourist sites have informational displays, but Ayuatthaya didn't do so well in that department. We lounged in a nice park for the afternoon and saw two girls

from our orientation walk past. We quickly joined forces and became one large group for the weekend. Around 4 p.m. we took a river tour around the city. I have become very fond of river tours because you can see a lot of the local housing along with the tourist sites. This tour made me a little uneasy at first when we saw two monitor lizards swimming along the shore. I suggest googling these if you are don't know what they are. They are larger than your average lizard. After the cruise we ate dinner, shopped at a few markets, and met up with a few other teachers from orientation. It is always a relief to share stories and realize that everyone is experiencing the same thing.

From Ayuthattaya, the seven of us took a morning train an hour north to Lopburi for the monkey

festival. This city is famous for the hundreds of macaque monkeys that inhabit the city center, especially the temples. Every year a festival to honor the monkeys takes place on the last Sunday in November. How convenient. I think the only word that truly describes this place is bizarre. There are literally packs of monkeys in the streets, climbing on cars, hanging from buildings, drinking coke, eating cotton candy, and jumping on people. I no longer think monkeys are cute! I am so thankful none of them jumped on me because I would have freaked out, no doubt. Around noon there was a ceremony to honor the monkeys. It consisted of men dressed up in monkey costumes dancing to Thai music. It was pretty humorous because most of the time we were trying to figure out what was going on. The highlight was when they had men from the Thai army parachute onto the grass in front of us. It was cool to see, but didn't really have anything to do with the monkeys.

This coming weekend we are headed to Chiang Mai! I can't wait!