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Published: June 22nd 2011
So as the title implies all I do is bpii tiao, but perhaps that doesn't imply much if you don't know what bpii tiao(ing) is. (Yes I just made a transliterated Thai word into a somewhat English word). Anyway bpii tiao(ing) is basically going on field trips and it seems as though every weekend that is exactly what I am doing. It has been a great experience and has brought me to several places around Thailand already. This weekend was spend in Lopburi, Central Thailand, 6 hours away from home.
My sister and I headed out with Nung Heart and spent the next six hours on the bus. Now a magical thing happened on this bus, there was a movie playing, but not just any movie it was SHARKTAPUS. Yes aren't you impressed, I sure was. (somewhat of an inside joke, sorry). That was about the only magical part of the bus trip to LopBuri but once there things picked up!
Saturday morning we headed out bright and early to a wat. LopBuri, unlike Roi-et, has mountains everywhere and they really are beautiful. We walked around but as it turns out the wat anyone actually wants to see is
up about a million stairs. Yes an exaggeration no doubt, but when it is a million degrees (yes I know again an exaggeration) it feels like a million stairs which makes it feels like a million degree you get it, its a vicious circle really.
Once at the top, the place really was beautiful and it was worth climbing up all those stairs to see. Once we all took a look around we hiked on back down and headed to wat number two. Now this is where things get interesting, mostly because I'm not hundred percent sure I was at a wat. First we hiked up 310 stairs, Once we made it to the top there was a dragon face enterance carved into the mountain. As cool as that was, I was more interested in the monkey hanging out in the tree near by. Snapping a few photos my sister had to practically drag me inside.
There we took a seat and a man walked in. Was he a monk? Well he was dressed like one but he had long hair and a beard which I'm pretty sure is a no-no. We had an in depth conversation... haha
no I understood about 3 words which included hair, dreams, and white. Someone assemble those into a way that would make sense. By the end of the conversation, I'm pretty sure the monk told me that I was going to have a pretty cool dream. A dream about what you may ask? Well I'm not sure but my sister seems to think that I'm going to dream up lottery numbers and give them to her and shes going to win. I guess we'll find out. After that he made me come before him where he gave me a painting from England of Buddha when he was younger. I must say this was pretty awesome to get this from him, not so awesome to hike down the mountain with Buddha in my arms.
With the Wat's out of the way we headed to lunch and then off to the river. I'm not sure how, but we always end up at a river and I'm told its the same river. Possible, sure why not. Swimming was not in the cards this time around, seeing as nobody wanted to swim but snacking on some shrimp flavored puffs and beer was.
We
spent most of the afternoon there relaxing and talking about this and that. Everything I said was hilarious especially when I broke out my Isan vocab. But it was getting late so we headed home, took a shower and headed back out.
We went off to a huge market. I couldn't quite figure out if the market was a yearly thing or something special for this time of year but what I could figure out was that everyone was super excited over this random fruit that I had never seen before, don't remember the name and in the end really didn't even taste that good. But we bout a bunch to bring home and give to everyone... perhaps its an acquired taste?
We headed home for good this time we're we called it a night, because tomorrow we would be waking up early to head out on a hunt for monkeys.
Sunday morning came and we all piled into the car and headed out to another wat. I suppose it was more of a ruin and reminded me of Ayuttaya. It also had several museums that showed the importance of LopBuri though out the years. I enjoyed
looking at the history of the area, and especially enjoyed that it was written in English.
After walking around there we headed to a second wat. This one was in the middle of the city and what made it interesting was not the wat itself but rather the huge population of monkey's running around. I am actually not a fan of this, seeing the people feeding them makes the monkeys bold and aggressive. I witnessed this myself when I saw one of those monkeys pinch someones glasses. Whose glasses did they pinch, none other than mine. I ran after that little guy like my life depended on it until the little guy dropped my glasses!
That was enough for me, I grabbed from photos, took a look inside which was cool because there were a bunch of bats out and about and then headed home on a very long LONG bus ride. A very successful family vacation if I do say so myself, unfortunately no Sharktapus on the way home but I survived. Oh and I survived the whole thing with Buddha on my lap, since you can't put him on the ground or anywhere else really.
So I knew when I first started writing this particular blog that there was more bpii tiaoing than just my trip to Lop Buri, but as I ran around doing other things I forgot about it and just wrote about Lop Buri. Now before I headed to Lop Buri I went to Saraburi (all of these places start to sound the same.)
To be frank I just want to show you my photos because as so many of my other trips have gone we went to wats, went to a river and then went to more wats, not that I don't enjoy every single one because each are beautiful in their own unique way and some are made even better by the presence of monkeys or the King's signature. Plus the trip was several weeks ago and anything witty I could have said or written has now slipped my weary mind so your reading would not be as enjoyable as I would hope for so again ENJOY THE PHOTOS! 😊
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Aunt Nanette
non-member comment
your blog & pictures
Hi Erin, I enjoyed your blog, the pictures are absolutly beautiful. While you are having very hot weather, a tornado was spotted 16 miles from Toms River. Michael's been working at the office for your Dad these past 2 weeks, so it's been nice for me to talk to him while he is there.Looking forward to your next blog Love A.N.