The Monkey Temple at Lopburi

23rd May, 2007.

We took the train from Ayutthaya to Lopburi, taking about an hour, and only costing 13 Baht each. In the process we met a lone French tourist who we invited along for the day. We arrived at the central station and had lunch in town, but unfortunately we got a little lost and paced around the streets trying to work out where we were going. It didn’t help that all the signs were in Thai.

Eventually we walked back toward the railway tracks and discovered that the Monkey Temple was only 800m away from the station.

The Monkey Temple or Phra Prang Sam Yod is a three prang, Khmer style temple from around the year 1200. Upon entry to the temple you can pay for nuts and you will also be issued a small bamboo stick. The stick can be used for the small monkeys to play on, and also be used a whacking stick. The monkeys get very aggressive if you taunt them. They will have a go even though you are four times their size.

They are clever too: when you bend down to hand a nut to the monkeys they may leap up and bite the nut bag you are holding, thus spilling the nuts everywhere. This happened to Sam. Our new French friend was bitten, albeit minor. He also lost his sunglasses; he allowed a small monkey to clamber on him and the monkey took off with his sunglasses up the temple’s centre tower. The monkeys seem to taunt tourists at the top of the temple with hats, sunglasses and water bottles that they pinched. We feed the monkeys and walked around the temple for about an hour. The temple itself is not worth mentioning, it is “stock standard.”

The day concluded by catching the train back to Ayutthaya.