Monkey trouble...
After a short train ride of one hour I arrived in Lopburi. Somehow I already liked this town better than Ayuthaya (the people seem more friendly).
I'm staying in a Chinese-style hotel (completely tiled room with white tiles) not far from the station. It does not have much atmosphere, but it's clean. Lop Buri was the second capital of Siam a few hundred years ago so there are a lot of temple ruins here. They are very fond of the monarch from that period: Phra Narai. There is a complete museum (very interesting) about the period of his reign in his former palace. Because there are hardly any tourists here (and certainly no tour groups) it is nice just to wander around the ruins.
First I went to the former palace. I was the only tourist there and it was really nice to walk around.
A pack of monkeys is living in the town and they mostly hang around one specific shrine ruin: Prang Sam Yot. Wherever you look, you see monkeys. They are also on the buidlings surrounding the area and they use the power lines to get from buiding to building. I was trying to photograph a little group of monkeys with one recently born one when I suddenly felt of my backpack weighing a lot more than it was supposed to be... It turned out a monkey had approached me from behind and was now trying to steal my water. As I turned around he jumped off and lost the bottle. Tricky little bastards... :-)
I had lunch at a street vendor at the square in front of the train station and was joined by a security guard who works at the train station. His English was as poor as my Thai so we kinda "talked" using hands and feet :-). After I finished my noodles I said goobye to my "lunchbuddy" and continued my walk across town.
After a few hours you've seen all the ruins in the town so I had something to eat on the street (the people here speak even less English so it was kind of a struggle to get something) and arranged my train ticket to Sukhothai for tomorrow. There was a night market and I found a guesthouse on the corner overlooking the market where I had some beers. I met a guy from London and a guy from Sweden (Ted) there.
