Escaping the monkeys in Lopburi

From Sukhothai we made our way south to Lopburi. A town which is mostly known for its monkeys, which I hate, but it served as a practical stopover. In fact, we've been very lucky with our transportation, the bus and train were just about to depart when we arrived at the station so we had like zero waiting time.

Luckily, not all of Lopburi is infested by monkeys, they concentrate mainly on an old temple ruin and the neighboring streets. But here they are a real pest. They jump on people's backs, steal every loose item, be it on cars, motorbikes or backpacks and worst of all, they attack when you try to chase them off, they are really nasty!

I took hardly any pictures, too afraid they might snatch the phone from my hands.

Thanks god we also found some nice corners in Lopburi.

In order to escape all that monkey business we hired a scooter and escaped to see some temples and more buddhas.

Eva did all the driving through the mad traffic and I desperately latched onto the scooter and we survived. We first went to a lake where we sat on a terrace over the water enjoying the fresh wind and watching the locals. Even though it was a weekday many families were around, swimming fully clothed in the lake. 

After that we further explored the surroundings of Lopburi during sunset

 

 

This is the entrance gate to one of the temples: 

 

But the best part of the whole day is that we accidentally ran into a huge bazaar-like market with an abundance of food. For several hours we roamed the aisles tried various dishes and enjoyed the loud and busy atmosphere. For once it was no tourist market, we were almost the only westerners and English knowledge of the people was rather poor. With the help of me picture dictionary I could make sure that I don't accidentally try something fishy... This is my face after trying a deep-fried alga dish... not too bad!

But I have to say, it was all so greasy! You think Thai food is so healthy, because of all the good ingredients, but in reality they love grease, they deep-fry as much as possible and it was hard to find anything un-greasy...

However, we left the market being absolutely full and thrilled by the experience.