The Macaque Kingdom and the Sunflower Empire of Lop Buri

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Right smack in the middle of a week full of midterm exams came Teacher's Day which is celebrated here as it rightfully should be with no work for the teachers and right in the middle of the week on a Wednesday too and since none of us were doing any work on account of midterms anyways it was decided that it would be a good day to drag our poor little motorbikes on a backroads day trip to a near-by province. Tara and I had been made aware on an occasion or two of the city of Lop Buri (lope - burr - ee), or Lopburi if you prefer, which has an interesting combination of sites including some nice and interesting shaped mountains and also some ancient ruins from the Ayutthaya Period, the Khmer Empire and even some influence from the earlier Dvaravati period and that these ruins and even parts of the city had been taken over by Macaque monkeys who had driven away human habitation for several blocks but most importantly the vast sea of bright yellow sunflowers that stretched for miles and miles through the countryside and so it was agreed that this would be our destination for Teachers Day. But not too long after making the decision we realized that we were potentially looking at a three-hour drive on those tiny little motorbikes of ours and that we would no doubt have a couple more hours on them cruising through Lop Buri and then the terrifying realization that we might be spending the better part of 8 hours on a motorbike and it was too much to bear especially for old Vims and his poor old back and so we opted to catch the bus to Nakhon Ratchasima and hop-off in Lop Buri and see if we couldn't rent some motorbikes in town. And by this point we could see them now or see them never as some message board searches had turned up the disturbing news that the sunflowers may have already closed up for the year and Tara and I might have missed the boat seeing how we aren't going to be anywhere near this neck of the woods by the time next season (late November - early January) comes around and so we headed right down to the bus station and got some tickets with Vims and Ashley our travel companions for the day and the lady at the counter told us the ride was two hours so we figured it'd be three and we got off the bus in Lop Buri after about three and a half and not feeling all too bad either.

The city itself is a small little town in the main city-center like most medium-sized Thai towns with some nice little parks and lots of roadside vendors and restaurants and all that and kindly small town people too and not too many tourists at all which is always welcome and makes you feel like less of one yourself but enough tourists that a friendly little family who spoke English just fine had set up the Nhoom Guesthouse and they rented motorbikes and also had maps drawn to local attractions and pictures too and with them speaking English and all it made it a lot easier on all of us to just be lazy and not worry too much about thinking in Thai. And of course they wanted our passport which no one had but the kindly young curator didn't seem to mind too much, as well he shouldn't seeing how he was charging us $9 a bike for the day, and so he took just our drivers licenses instead which you really don't need to have with you anyways if you are a foreigner driving in Thailand and following the only law of the road which is the driver must wear a helmet, and a right and sensible rule at that. So by now of course it was nearly noon and we were all famished and then came the big black cloudy news that the sunflowers had closed for the year and our friend even went out to confirm it with his father - an authority in his own right seeing how many moons this wise old saint must have seen rise and fall over those grand old golden fields and so that got us down a bit but we decided we would go out to see them anyways and asked for the directions to the fields, thinking at the time that there were only a few fields in Lop Buri and then we also saw a picture of a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains and some nice temples and we were told that we should head out that way to eat lunch on the water which was agreeable to everyone and so we said our goodbyes and headed out with one of those not-to-scale hand-drawn maps which requires not only interpretation but plenty of intuition and patience also and then we were off. And wouldn't you know it that on our way out of town we drove right up one of those increasingly ubiquitous Thai highways that puts a sad feeling in your heart because you know pretty soon Thailand isn't going to be Thailand anymore just like every place that is unique and wonderful - they are all endangered species because here are all these big multinational corporations conquering the land and the wilderness and putting down big double-lane two-way roads with big businesses straddling both sides like woeful old tumors taking over the body and here they are the Big C shopping centers and Home-pro and TESCO Lotus and Makro and all the Asian versions of the Wal-Marts and all that trash and big car dealerships too and billboards trying to convice the people in this kindly Buddhist country to forget their ancient teachings and desire everything like the great tragedy that is the Baiyoke Tower in the center of Bangkok with it's gigantic letters 'JOY IS BMW' - capitalism laughing in the face of Buddhism's great teachers. But as we turned off that mournful highway and headed out towards the grand and ancient mountains I started to feel good again and at least we were here to see it now, like great chronicalers of the last generation to see the world as it once was.

So here came all of those strange towering mountains like a bizarre acid-trip dream and those friendly old palms and bananna trees and the air was fresh except for the occasional smoke from some slash-and-burn farmers getting back to it and as the old man had told miles and miles of wilted sunflowers in various states of decay and my head became dizzy thinking about how this place must look in full bloom with sunflowers and crazy mountains and those golden-temples in the hills - my god what fools we had been to miss it but even now it was still all grand and beautiful and as we drove on there were more and more fields of dead sunflowers, hundreds of them, some fields the size of ten football fields but others looking like they spanned tens of acres as far as the eye could see. And I'd be no less a liar than old George W B if I said we weren't disappointed but we were also hungry and so had no time to lament and mourn the untimely demise of the sunflowers and so we kept following the map toward the lake but the map made no sense and so we stopped at a few backroad stands to ask the friendly dear old country folks for some help and of course they always love to help those strange Thai-speaking foreigners though if you try to speak English with them they will do their best to help you too. And so with a little help we eventually found a temple which I remembered seeing in the background of the photo of the lake and it sat elevated upon a low mountain ridge and so we drove up and from the lookout we saw that beautiful sparkling lake not too far in the distance which warmed our hearts and especially because Ashley told us she had seen a field of still-open sunflowers facing away from the road but open from the back of Vims bike on the way out and of course we all thought she might be mad because we had seen nothing but wilted remnants but it was agreed that we would look out for this mysterious field on the way back.

Our friend at Nhoom Guesthouse had told us there were some nice places to eat on the lake and we were all hoping they weren't too nice because we were all trying to save our money and from our perch on the mountain-side temple I didn't see much of anything at the lake at all. The 'restaurants' as he had called them were an interesting arrangement which we had encountered before in Mae Hong Son much to everyone's delight. On one side of the road were the long wooden shacks with the tin roofs, each one connected to one another and separated only by walls, the inside of the shack being a make-shift kitchen and motorbike parking lot with a few squat toilet and the diningroom across the road, little floating docks with thatched roofs and delapadated bridges connecting them to the mainland and each restaurant demarcted by the walls of the giant long-house. Down on the docks there were several groups of young college-age Thais drinking Blend 285 whiskey with soda, picking at acoustic guitars, smoking some cigarettes and swimming in the lake in their jeans and t-shirts, carrying on like young people do and they were happy and a bit surprised to see us but they smiled opened our beers for us with lighters and we sat down on some simple straw mats at a low table and ordered some stir-fried vegetables in oyster sauce with garlic and a big Thai-style fried scrambled egg with fresh minced pork and some fried garlic-pork, stir fry with onions and sweet peppers, this and that and had a peaceful little lunch down on the fine lake and what a nice ambience to it all and I thought about where I could start my own little floating Thai restaurant on a lake somewhere just cooking fresh and hot simple foods in some famous little wok with a big grin like a great old Thai hawker. Once we had filled up we decided that we would go hunt for the sunflower field and I must confess that I didn't believe Ashley at all but I wanted to humor the girls and also to see some sunflowers so I figured it couldn't hurt and we paid our $10 for beers and food strapped on our helmets and waved goodbye to the little restaurant village and headed back through those crazy mountains with pine and palm bluffs alike.

When we turned back on the road with the purported sunflower field Vims took the lead on his bike with Ashley on the back looking for the sunflower field and then all of a sudden there it was, one single field and not a wilted sunflower in sight but hundreds of yards of bright yellow and green in every direction and what a fool I had been for doubting Ashley, though she hadn't seemed completely sure herself. And out came the cameras and pretty soon the girls were having a great time wandering through the sunflowers and there I was too just walking around with the flowers and the bees and there was poor old Vims standing on the outskirts because he is allergic to bees. It seems that one field owner must have decided to plant his field late, maybe some mystic type who knew we were coming and wanted some of those rich colors to be here to greet us but for whatever reason there they were, one fresh field of sunflowers in a sea of wilted brown sunflower carcasses and everyone felt real good for having seen it.

When we got back to town we had a couple of hours before the last bus departs for Nakhon Sawan and so we took a cautious stroll into the center of the Macaque Kingdom, not too fearfully because we had dealt with their kind before at Khao Nor in Nakhon Sawan but still a bit wary because we heard that this particular kingdom was home to some particularly aggressive types. My friend Ryan had told me that there were entire blocks that were completely abandoned by humans within the Macaque Kingdom but I had to see it for myself before I understood that the monkeys had indeed comandeered this entire neighborhood and that it no longer belonged to humankind. A few police officers stood by to serve as human security helping to keep the fragile peace between visitor and monkey in the area, and a few brave shopkeepers with big sticks tapping them on the side walk 'tap, tap tap' - the last hold-outs and of course the tourists who come to see the ancient temples. The monkeys now owned a few blocks of connected three story buildings and they easily moved up and down the buildings, scampering across powerlines, scaling poles, perching upon signs, eating whatever they could get their hands on, fighting and biting and generally carrying on like a lot full of monkeys should and I told them as much and they said that was funny since they felt the same way about us and we all had a good laugh. One brave European girl decided she wanted a picture with one of the monkeys climbing on her and so she sat down next to them but soon one of the monkeys climbed on and took hold of her hair and started trying to bite her head though he couldn't quite get his mouth open wide enough and she started to scream and panic and her friends started to panic and so did the monkey and the whole act went on for what must have been one agonizingly long minute before the monkey departed and went about his business. The whole gang had been in such a panic that none of them even captured a single photo which was why she had sat there in the first place but Tara had been snapping the entire time and so we took down their emails and promised to send her the photos, her taking such a risk for the shot and all she deserved to have it. And by now I had had about enough of it all as had the rest of us and so we went to return our bikes and saw that the street had been transformed into a giant walking street market. I decided on some moo yang for my trip home which is a dish from the Issan region of Thailand - marinated pork with a sweet and spicy, salty and very savory marinade and it is grilled over open coals and then sliced and served with sticky rice, fresh Thai-basil leaves and a spicy-hot chilli sauce called nam jim and for $1.20 I thought it would make a good bus meal and then it was off for the bus station so by 9:00 we were right back where we had started and that was that and it had been a situation of just hearing about a place and going without too many plans or questions and of course you will always find what you are looking for as long as your not looking too hard.

Photos complement of my fiance Tara Kenyon

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Photos

Sunflower Fields
Photos complements of Tara - except of course for this one