One of the day trips we went on while waiting for our visas and suits to be finished was to a town outside of Bangkok called Lopburi. Lopburi, however, is usually referred to as Monkey Town, and for good reason. This is what the guide book says about it, "Yet while the city is abundant in picturesque stone ruins and statues, Lopbury actually owes the majority of its tourism-generated income to a renegade gang of trouble-making monkeys who overrun the town and its ruins."
Sean and I got an early start and headed to the bus station to catch a bus to Lopburi. Unfortunately, instead of an express bus, we ended up getting on a local bus which stopped about every fifteen minutes for about 4 hours. At each stop the passengers were subjected to hoards of vendors who boarded the bus and shoved little sausages, kebabs, cold drinks, papers and fruit at you in hopes of making a few quick sales.
We weren't quite sure how we were going to know when our stop was, but as we pulled into a city four hours later, we began to see giant cardboard cutouts of monkeys placed along the highway and decided to get off at the next stop. Sure enough, we had arrived in Monkey Town.
The town held true to its name; there were literally monkeys everywhere. They seemed to hang out mainly in the center of town where there was kind of a playground set up for them. But they didn't stay put for long, they soon traipsed off in other directions and visited ruins, pestered store owners and sat on roofs, street signs and telephone wires. It was pretty surreal and felt like we were walking around in a never-ending zoo.
It was hot but any soda you wanted to drink on the go had to be done out of a bag since they wanted to keep the bottle
After about two hours we had had about enough of the constant chaos and headed to our next destination, Suphanaburi, a town on the way to a national park we wanted to visit the next day. We're hoping that this next town won't be overrun with any renegade gangs of wild primates.