Monkey Fest and a City of Ruins

We just got back home from visiting Lopburi which is a small town infamous for the takeover of monkeys. After a long bus ride through Bangkok, we were dropped off literally 1 block from our hotel and then some taxi man took us 4 miles away from it for 20 baht each. What an asshole. It was literally like 30 cents so we all quickly got over it and the hotel send someone to find us. We ate a late dinner and had some drinks before turning in for the night after a long day of teaching and traveling. Saturday we woke up to some delicious fried bananas right outside our window and of course, monkeys! We went to see the monkeys at the temple briefly before hopping a bus to Ayuttaya, Thailand's old capital city. We took all these back roads and the trip ended up being closer to 2.5 hours instead of 1 so we had a pretty late start. Our friend Danielle that we were meeting up with had been waiting for about 6 hours and had made some Thai friends who offered to drive us around all day for a measly 200 baht. We went to lunch at a really nice restaurant and had some fried fish, chicken dishes and of course, rice. Then we were off to the ruins! The ruins were extremely cool and there were Buddha statues everywhere that were pretty decently preserved. We went to 4 different sites before sunset and all mostly felt that we saw all we needed to see. We took the train back which was much cheaper and quicker. The only downside? Bugs EVERYWHERE! The lights were left on and so bugs were massing around the top of the train and there were these pebble sized black bugs covering the floor so it was pretty much impossible to not be covered in bugs. We just all gave up and brushed off at our final destination. Ma pen rai. We went out for dinner and had some fried fish that was excellent, some pretty delicious duck and chicken. We only ordered 4 plates to share thinking it would be heaping servings, but we had to order another whole round! We also bought bottles of whiskey to share from 7/11 (our new favorite place), which is much cheaper than buying from the restaurant. We stayed out pretty late and ran into some other farong from our CIEE group so the next morning was pretty rough. We found a little place with some classic English breakfast food and enjoyed that before heading over to the monkey temple for the mass feeding ceremony. It was PACKED! We finally pushed throught the crowd and got some serious close contact with the monkeys. One jumped on Calan, one almost jumped on me and some girl from our group got peed on by multiple monkeys. It was hilarious! They were drinking bottles of water, cokes and eating everything you could possibly think of! We saw multiple monkey fights break out along with some brief mating and Sarah and I even got interviewed! Look on Associated Press website to see if you can find me! We finally decided we had enough and checked out of our hotel and hopped a bus back to Bangkok where we had a deliciously fantastic pizza meal. Now I'm exhausted and ready to struggle through another week of teaching...after some much needed and deserved rest. Love you all!