Monkey Town

Thursday 27th October

The plan was to stay in Lop Buri for a day or so and continue on to see some other parts of central Thailand although the mission to get there had put me off exploring too far. Instead I spent a couple of days in the city which is well known in Thailand as the monkey town. In one section of the old town there is a temple which has become a home to monkeys. The monkeys also run amuck in part of the town climbing on power lines and on cars and eating whatever they can get their hands onto. They will also bite if you try to get too close. I did go inside the monkey temple although the girls I was with left me to go alone. Monkeys are locked out of the inside of the temple but it is infested with rats and bats. The inside of the temples was disgusting but it was quite a sight in the grounds as the monkeys went about their daily life.
While in Lop Buri I also visited the ruins of the temple directly opposite the train station which is not over run by monkeys.
The Lop Buri crew were all still on holiday so we spent a couple of nights drinking at a pub before continuing onto the club. The band at the club Jontrajao seemed to play exactly the same set on the two nights including Zombie by The Cranberries which was the only English song they played all night.
Some of the girls had invited me to visit a waterfall and it ended up twelve girls and I climbed into or on the back of a ute and made our way to the waterfall. The waterfall was quite spectacular and the surrounding grounds where full of Buddha statues. The waterfall was full of young children sliding down the rocks and families having picnic by the side of the falls. The local boys thought it was hillarious watching the white girls in bikinis swimming.
I climbed in the back of the ute with ten girls on the return journey to Lop Buri. It was a pretty good way to see Thailand. We had almost made it back though when the ute stopped. We all piled out as oil began leaking out the bottom of the car. The driver called for a friend who drove to collect us and he swapped cars as our driver took us back to the centre of the old town.
I was glad to have seen Lop Buri as many of the interns working for the same internship as me have been placed there although I felt like I had seen the whole city in a couple of days. News of the floods in Bangkok was getting worse therefore I wanted to get back to the Chacoengsao side of Bangkok before I got trapped and not be able to get back to my school so I left on the bus having been told there where still no trains to Bangkok.