Monkeying around

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Lopburi is a town of small Khmer ruins and packs of confident monkeys, who can be seen as at home picking fleas off a friend about the old temples (that are separated into small parks), as they are strutting past mobile phone shops and then chasing foes up telephone poles.

Some of the first monkeys we saw on leaving the train were thieving food from an open shop front. For us, this was novel seeing monkeys all about, hanging, even banditting and probably watching Netflix by evening. If you looked around you'd keep seeing more, say up on a roof or sat out on a car or swinging from the city's cable creepers. For those who lived here, I suspected the macaques (all 3,000 of them!) were a nuisance - of seeing familiar faces about the town and knowing they could start their kind of mischief at any time - despite the belief that the monkeys bring good luck and fortune. The monkeys here have free reign to roam, to enter public buildings and have their own festival weekend every November; they're part of the society and relate back to an ancient Sanskrit tale of a heroic monkey deity and his monkey army who saved Sita, the wife of Lord Ram, from a demon.

It was a grand day trip, a train ride from Ayutthaya. The train ticket was just 13 baht (30p), and walking out to the platform at Ayutthaya there was a fullness of people sat out eating from the ubiquitous plastic boxes and once tightly wound bags. No one seemed too worried about the time the clock said, or that their checked phone would say, or that the rechecked timetable would indicate. The station seemed a fine place to hang out a while. To one end a whole area belonged to the orange clad monks, young to old, with some older monks in orange knitted beany hats. We later learnt that the monks were given dedicated carriages on the trains, and found ourselves on the wrong end as it arrived! So we had to squidge through to find a standing spot further along, leaving behind the signs that hung above 'monks only in this carriage please'.

We had got some rice and eggs for breakfast, which would be offered to the monk sitting near us on the platform. We was a little unsure if he wanted to accept at first, before he placed his box out to us, shook his head to our offer and simply asked where we'd gotten our hearty mound for one of his fellow monks. The train took one and a half hours and was a nice ride. As space became available we were called over cheerfully to take the spare seats. I sat next to a lovely older lady, with a huge smile, and I wish I could have spoken thai with her as she was keen to chat. But we did both look at my kindle, having a giggle as she'd highlight words and turn the pages.



On walking into the first green square that held around 80monkeys at any one time, with a centre piece of a detailed Khmer prang, we soon experienced the monkey mischief ourselves. I'm not one to actually shriek, it's a pretty rare occurance, but I did just that as we walked from the information booth and four pads landed hard on my head after a jump- monkey head! You had to swing about left to right whilst laughing and hope they'd spring back off. Before long Sunder had four monkey wrapped limbs and another creeping up to his head to pat and play! Funny, but we now learnt that you had to keep your eyes all about.

There was lots of play and alpha make strutting and group grooming around the grass and temple ruins. Whilst a Biro that I thought was safely hidden in a side pocket was soon swiped and my multiple attempts to get the pen off the monkey (and away from his frantic chewing) proved unsuccessful.

After this exhausting introduction we'd wander the streets and stop for coffee and noodles. We visited the palace grounds and this monkey free zone was a huge peaceful garden, with varied plantlife and the still strong ruin walls running around as a white canvas to the greenery. We didn't see many others at all but sat out under huge trees and by ponds from hundreds of years ago (used to bathe in by the old kings) and read and relaxed. The grounds also held the Narai national museum which was great. We learnt about the trading networks of centuries ago, of different reigns and relations to the Khmer and Tai, and of the 'Lopburi-style' Buddha images and representation. Lopburi was one of Thailand's oldest settlements, thought to have been founded over a 1,000 years ago by a Hindu king, and was later a key supporting city for the Ayutthaya kingdom.



As the evening came in we grabbed a train back to Ayutthaya. The platform was full of school kids and there was some reminders to my days of waiting for trains with school friends, sitting about nattering in groups and sharing phone screen views; though we wouldn't have been playing football about the spare tracks nor eating delicious thai food!

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