Of course dogs aren't the only creatures that wander the streets..there are also skinny cats, plump rats, ginormous cockroaches, and of course elephants. They always freak me out a bit. I will be looking down, focusing so hard on not tripping on the uneven sidewalk, then I will glance up to find a huge elephant standing before me tagging behind his owner..which then of course leads to me clumsily tripping..
And on Monday when I visited Lopburi I found yet another member to add to the menagerie of soi life..monkeys! After a two-hour van ride from Bangkok, my boyfriend Dominic and I stepped out the van to find monkeys begging for food right on the street while others skittered along the electric wires above us. I kept wondering if they were going to poop on us. Heehee..The ones on the sidewalk were like goats, chowing down on anything and everything that happened to be littering the pavement. One even stole Dominic's water bottle and was chomping on the cap, trying to twist it off with his broken yellow teeth. I tried to get near him, but he leapt at me, shooting bullets at me with his fierce eyes, so I decided to leave and give him a little personal space with his water bottle.
The most monkey-infested area we visited was at Prang Sam Yot, which is the ruins of an old Buddhist temple. Lopburi was the old capital of Thailand, even before it was Thailand, over 700 years ago. So there are many old ruins around that have been rebuilt from the olden days.
A cute, pudgy Thai lady was our tour guide to help protect us from the evil, vicious monkeys, and guide us to the cute, tame ones we could pet and feed. For 20 baht I bought two bags of sunflower seeds to feed the small, grey gangly inhabitants of the temple grounds.
The first time I tried to feed one his little fingers grabbed hastily at the seeds in my hand, making me flip out and run away. Heehee...but as we kept touring I calmed down a bit..until the lady let me hold a wooden stick and swing three monkeys on it. It was good fun until a monkey jumped on my back, and gripped onto my purse strap. I screamed and they all fell off the stick, and of course we all started cracking up.
But what freaked me out the most was when I was getting my picture taken next to one, and he decided my sweaty, pulled back hair needed some help. He put his little hands in my hair, and started to pull on my ponytail. I screamed and fled, laughing hard once again.
There was such a wide variety, some had bulging stomachs, others, were skinny and slow, some were fast and springy, but the ones that were the most bizarre were the babies. They looked like E.T. to me, huge ears that enveloped their faces and little bony bodies covered with translucent gray skin. Wow, I think they could be in a new scary animal for some horror flick.
It is fun to see monkeys spice up the street life of Thailand mainly because Buddhists traditionally don't believe in killing animals, hence the soi dogs, and cats..and perhaps cockroaches, and rats too? Whatever the reason, I'm just glad I got to play with some monkeys for a day.
