Keoni and I just did a two day trip to Lopburi, the small town 3 or 4 hours north of Bangkok that's overrun by monkeys. There are less monkeys now, which in general was a good thing. To me the highlight was how easy and inexpensive it is to do short trips out of Bangkok, especially related to using the train system. Eye and I--my wife--have went on a lot of short weekend trips, but we always drive. It's interesting how the trade-off works out, even though it's just as one would expect. Let's start there.
Train travel
It cost us 27 baht per person per trip for the train, under 1 USD. That's something like $3 on a three hour round trip, in total, for two people. That's crazy. Obviously the Thai government subsidized local train travel really heavily. An air conditioned train would have cost more, and issues with reserving seats come up for those. It still wouldn't have been much.
There's a decent chance that there was a foreigner rate and I should have been paying three times that much ($3 or 4 for the trip, maybe 5 or 6), but that changes nothing. Keoni bought the tickets, and if so they let it go, that his companion didn't look as Thai. Maybe I am considered local, for that purpose, because I have a Thai driver's license, so I am a resident.
Even if it was $10, more than ten times as much, I wouldn't mind paying more, but dual pricing does offend some local foreigners. I probably pay as much tax as everyone in the train car we were in combined, aside from sales tax; that's why others see it as a problem. We are kind of poor, but that relates to maintaining two households in two different countries.
We were discussing the general downsides of this form of travel just after getting back, and there aren't many. If the train is really full you might need to sit with two people on a seat designed to hold two people, across from someone you don't know, sharing foot space. The way up was like that, most of the way, until more people got off and we moved. It doesn't change a lot, but it was nice sitting on a cushioned bench style seat designed for two people instead.
The bathroom was local style; a stainless steel squat toilet. For many Westerners that could be a deal breaker, a fixture that's almost impossible to use. It wouldn't have been a big deal for us, and on a three hour trip we only went in there to take a picture of it.
People went by every 10 minutes or so offering food or drinks, at 7/11 or local market pricing levels. You could keep drinking water, soda, or canned coffee, and eat fruit or simple Thai meals, like grilled meats or pad krapao (essentially the Thai national dish, ground pork fried with basil, with rice, usually served with a fried egg). One might wonder if that food is safe. My guess is that you could eat it every day for a year and be fine, but it's only a guess. Those drinks were under $1 (half that), and meals at just under $1 (nearly that), so you would be spending like a local.
It's not all that hot now, but the first day was worse. We are acclimated to the local weather, so it's fine for us. Other visitors wouldn't be, and they might suffer, on a hot day. You can plan to go quite early, missing that part. The trains run several times a day.
Lopburi; sites and monkeys
They've rounded up most of the monkeys, keeping them in a caged area somewhere, we heard. Someone else commented online that they were moved out to the forest, and that may be a pleasant cover story, that sounds better than hearing that they're now essentially zoo prisoners. We saw maybe 20, in two days; that was enough to get a feel for it. In the past we saw hundreds, on a one-day visit; they were absolutely everywhere. You needed to carry a stick around to keep them from trying to steal things from you. Of course they want food, but they had probably learned that if they steal your sunglasses or cell phone you immediately pursue ways to trade them things to get those back.
A main attraction there is a really nice historical museum, that Eye and I visited last fall. Keoni and I went there. It's interesting hearing about Thai history, about what happened in the 6th to 8th centuries there, the peak of that local culture, and at other time periods.
Having learned more about Thai history over the years it became more apparent that this was a fairly sanitized and limited range instruction about even the local history. It kept referencing Khmer (Cambodian empire) architecture and personal goods style themes, but never once said that the area was ruled by a foreign power, which I think is just how that went. Of course it doesn't matter. I was interested in hearing more about the time period prior to the 6th century, since we visited Si Thep last year as well, and there was an interesting city-state time period in there, but they didn't say much about that. They did reach back to stone and bronze age roots, and describe the history of that, which I found especially fascinating.
I'm not really claiming that they were sanitizing and revising Thai history. It was more that exclusive focus on some main themes limited others even coming up. That's splitting hairs, isn't it? There was a time period when Lopburi was very developed and advanced, prominent in the broad region, and there was a lot to cover about that, during that 6th to 8th century range. It's fine that they didn't cover as much about the 8th century to the present, or the first century up to 5th.
I think it's a Western perspective approach to wonder about what came before, as if that's a critical part of the same story. But then when you learn about the Roman empire you "only" have 4 or 5 centuries to work with, and with dominant Greek culture maybe even less, and there was always something before. In general as you move back the details become less granular, and you end up hearing about artifacts implying a lot of things, without a written history tracing what it all meant.
That museum is still fantastic, very much worth a visit. Probably if you visited another half dozen historical sites you would build up more of an image of that main time-frame, and perhaps some about what came before and after.
We didn't do that. We arrived Saturday afternoon, saw that museum, sorted out a hotel stay, rested a little, and looked around and had dinner.
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not all that historical, but it is related to tea |
Travel by train versus car
In lots of places there are local tuk-tuks or songtaews (trucks with benches in the back) to get around locally, but we didn't see much of that there. So we walked. Using a car you tend to focus in on just a few main places, between driving and parking, and you see things block by block more on foot. Eye and I walk enough that we get to both when we drive, since she loves local markets and seeing different areas.
Still, I suppose it's a trade-off not having a car. We were limited to local hotels, but luckily there were a lot. Again we payed next to nothing for the hotel stay; around 500 baht, or $15. Often it's better to bump that to 600-700 to get a breakfast included, but we found a decent option that was fine, and very central, and went with it.
There's a newer part of town, and the older part, that we were in. I think they relocated a lot of government buildings and some new infrastructure to get away from the monkeys. Then later the monkeys got to be a bit much, and they relocated most of them instead. They are kind of nasty little creatures, beyond being really cute. Keo and I experienced one threatening us at the Khao Keo Open Zoo, outside of Pattaya, this past summer. All we did was look at him, which he took as a threat. He growled and waved a bit, I guess it was. So we picked up sticks to walk past him, since he was on the handrail of a narrow walkway, and seeing the sticks he reeled in the aggression, as if he never meant it in the first place.
Once at that same zoo a monkey stole a bag of chips from our niece. Soon after a monkey with a baby made a threatening face and sound to us, seemingly telling us that if anything happened she would fight to protect her child. Before there was any time to react my wife copied that expression and gesture, telling that monkey in no uncertain terms that she would also fight to protect her children, and the monkey would lose. They both settled into a sort of mutual respect after that, and the monkey walked off.
They're a bit scary, even though they're small, because if you got bit in the least by them, or even scratched, you'd probably need to have a round of four rabies shots immediately (the first one; the rest follow on a schedule).
I've been through that, related to getting bitten by a local shop cat. I love that cat too; she is a close friend. But she was agitated that day, probably from fighting with other street cats, and she crawled under my leg as I squatted to pet her, and then felt trapped, by the placement she had chosen, and reacted. Cats really do have fast reaction time; a cat would lose a fight with a human, but you would look like you lost within not so many seconds.
The exchange cost her dearly; she couldn't be trusted to stay on a leash outside that shop, and has been caged daily since, free to roam that shop and household in their off hours. I still pet her. If I need rabies shots again I'll get them, but as I see it she needs my friendship and support more than ever, and people and cats sometimes make mistakes.
Other parts
There wasn't much more to it. They had two small night markets where we could seek out dinner, but we got take-out from a strip of food shops instead. I bought egg tarts that I had for breakfast. Keoni had grilled chicken for dinner, and I had vegetarian food (it's a 10 day long vegetarian festival, or was, ending this past weekend).
We stopped at a coffee shop twice (Cafe Amazon; there were other local options, but not many). We walked over to see the next roundabout / main intersection area, but there wasn't much there to see. We visited a favorite Chinese drink and ice cream outlet, Mixue, which was decorated for Halloween, which is a bit atypical. It was nice seeing some of the town, but there were only government, military, and university buildings in that area. We never did figure out how to take a songtaew (a truck converted to serve as a tiny bus alternative).
Spending more time in Lopburi might not be interesting. We didn't see the new government / city center area, and didn't visit much for ruins, so two days might still be ok. We've been to a lot of ruins, and they kind of repeat at some point. Ayutayah and Sukhothai are more extensive and developed. It's interesting that there's not much at all of that in Bangkok; it really wasn't an ancient or old developed area. The city's history goes back many hundreds of years, but not to the 6th to 8th centuries, or at least so it seems.
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Lopburi had a municipal water supply system in the 1600s; not bad |
It goes without saying that I'm referencing the Western / Roman calendar, but I'll add that here. The year is different in Thailand, based on the Buddha's life as a starting point. It's Monday, October 19, 2569 BE:
Buddhist Era (B.E.): Thailand counts years from the death of Gautama Buddha, placing the calendar 543 years ahead of the Gregorian calendar (2026 + 543 = 2569).
Thai Abbreviation: Written in Thai as พ.ศ. (Phut Sakarat).
Unless I'm wrong about that, and these historical dates really run 500 years earlier? Probably that's it, and the era we kept hearing about related to 600 CE / AD onward.
Conclusions
I would highly recommend people in Bangkok or visitors include some local travel in their plans. Why not? Sukhothai is also fantastic to visit, and you can do Ayuttayah on a day-trip, just outside of Bangkok. To go further, up to Chiang Mai, for example, it's better to take a second class air conditioned train, so the seats can convert to bunks. That didn't cost much over 1000 baht back when we last did it, and is probably closer to 2000 now ($60), but it's worth it.
It's interesting considering how it might be uncomfortable for some to do what we just did. Plenty of people speak some English, but more don't, and foods being unfamiliar could be an issue. Keo had grilled chicken and french fries, with a small salad, so other Western food is around. People might worry about getting sick, or could be concerned if crime is an issue, or if the monkeys are dangerous. They kind of are, but risk is limited, especially since there aren't many now.
Si Thep is also a great local area to visit, with historical sites there relating to the time period just before this main Lopburi regional influence. It's another hour and a half drive further north, so you would probably need a car for that. Renting cars in Thailand isn't that difficult or expensive, but driving might be, for people from the US, accustomed to using the other side of the road. Sukhothai is nice too anyway, a bit further north, but better set up for transportation and foreign visitors.
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