Lop Buri. A place where monkeys run the town and the locals protect themselves with long wooden sticks. A place where sunflowers stand tall in fields as far as the eye can see, backdropped by mountainous landscapes. This is where I spent my weekend. Getting there wasn't the easiest thing in the world to do though. A 2 hour long bus ride to Bangkok followed by a 2 and a half hour long train ride to Lop Buri, and I had to stand the whole time. When I arrived, I met up with my four favorite people from my program: Ian, Lexa, Joe, and Deb. We've been close since orientation and have stayed in touch really well. I checked into my hotel and then went off to see the town. It's a small place, mainly just one street with hotels and restaurants along it, smaller streets off to the sides and end-capped with the famous monkey temple where they all congregate. From outside my hotel room window you can see the monkeys hanging out on power lines, telephone poles, and on the monkey cages that protected the room. I even had a tug of war with a monkey over a bottle of water through the cage. We quickly went over to the temple, and almost immediately this happened to me....
That's right. I was surrounded by monkeys and a few of them even jumped on me!
We met up with a few other people, making our total 8 and hopped in the back of a pickup
truck, setting off to the sunflower fields. It felt great being in the back of that truck. Sun on my skin, wind in my face, and scenery you'd have to see to believe. Really one of the best moments I've had in Thailand so far. We arrived at the fields and spent lots of time walking around, and posing for cheesy pictures. I mean, really, what's more cheesy than being in a field of sunflowers? Afterwards, we hopped back on the truck, went up the mountain to a Wat and prayed with a monk. No one knew what they were saying obviously, we just repeated what the guide told us to say. An unbelievably cool experience nonetheless. On the way back into town we stopped at one more sunflower field, not as big as the other one, but the flowers were much more vibrant in color.
We went back into town, met up with a whole bunch of other people, most I hadn't seen since orientation ended. There were probably about 30 or so people there from CIEE. It was a little overwhelming to see so many of them. I had the same conversation with most of them, "How's teaching going, etc..." It was really good to see some people though. We ate dinner, had some drinks and then went off to a bar, but I was exhausted and I actually fell asleep in the bar. I rested my head on my hand while I was sitting in a chair, and I must have just passed out. I woke up when my roommate Jon tapped me and told me to go back to the hotel. So I did. The
next morning was the start of the big monkey feeding festival. There were people everywhere and everything was all set up for the monkeys to feast. It was quite funny to watch the monkeys binge eat on junk food and soda but it got old kind of fast. After about 45 minutes, I had enough. I left Lop Buri with Ian, Lexa, Joe and Deb. We hopped on a bus back to Suphan Buri, where they lived and where I would catch another bus to my town. Once in Suphan Buri, ate lunch and then went to the big Wal-Mart-Esque store called Tesco Lotus. They have them all over Thailand but this one was the biggest I had seen so far. It had everything, but I only wanted one thing... Peanut Butter. I got myself a big jar of Jif, extra crunchy. I also picked up some Nutella and bread, and my goodness was I excited. We said our goodbyes and I caught a bus back to Kamphaeng Saen. I had a peanut butter and nutella sandwich when I got home, and it was just as gloriously wonderful as I could have hoped. Next weekend I'm meeting up with the same group and heading off the Ko Si Chang and then to Ko Samet for a week of beaches and sunshine and relaxation. The weekend cannot get here soon enough.
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