Lopburi Monkey Festival

Last weekend was the first time Eric, Anna and I all spent a weekend without at least one of the other. Eric had been feeling under the weather and wanted to stay in Suphan to rest and relax. Anna made plans with some friends from orientation to go to Bangkok. I decided to go to Lopburi for the weekend to celebrate the city's famous monkey festival.

Lopburi is about 2 hours from Suphan, so I let myself sleep in to a whopping 7:00 am and headed off to the bus stop Saturday morning. There wasn't a direct bus from Suphan to Lopburi, so I took the 1 1/2 hour bus to Ayutthaya and then the 2 hour bus from Ayutthaya to Lopburi. By the time I reached Lopburi it was noon and my bus dropped me off right outside some Wat that I eventually discovered was the Wat where the Monkey Festival (also called Monkey Party) would take place on Sunday. I walked around the Wat, which you cannot see from pictures but it is a pretty small area right in the middle of old Lopburi city.

After watching the monkey for a while I headed over to my hostel, which ended up only being a few blocks away. I checked in and put my stuff down in the tiny room before going to find some food. I sat down at a stand that was luckily covered because rain started dumping down which was even more dramatized by the tin roof. I thought the rain would stop after half an hour or so since that is what usually happens, but it continued. I eventually went back to my little room to lay down and listen to the chain smoking French people talking outside my room.

Wat the day before the festival.

I made plans to meet up with a couple girls (Allison and Megan) who also live and teach in Suphan, but are not in my same apartment like the other 15 foreign teachers. They had rented motorcycles and were stuck waiting out the rain, but eventually came back to Lopburi. We spent the evening hanging out at some Wat ruins, getting dinner, and going to bed early to wake up and go to the festival.

We made our way over to the festival around 9:30 am and the Wat ruins were transformed from the day before with tons of vendors selling popcorn, soda, candy, cookies, hot dogs, etc. The monkeys were already being fed the aforementioned foods, but at 10:00 a parade led by the Lopburi high school marching band came up the street and into the Wat area to bring tons of fruit and more goodies that are terrible for the monkeys to be eating. There were also hundreds of monkey stuffed animals layed out in from of the wat with some of the fruit. I think monkeys like stuffed animals since they tried to steal Allison's.

Lopburi Marching Band

Fruit and stuffed animals for the monkeys.

Overall, the monkey festival was very bizarre, but they are very silly/entertaining animals to watch. I had read that they would climb on you if you wanted, but I didn't realize that you actually didn't have a choice. If you had a purse, backpack, or were carrying food, at least 2 monkeys were going to climb all over you with a focus on climbing all over your head.

Allison saving her stuffed animal from the monkeys.

One monkey stole my sunglasses off my head and ran up to the top of the Wat with them, trying them on and hitting them against the stone. He eventually dropped them and I ran through the monkeys to snatch them before another monkey could. Shortly after this incident, I had two more monkeys on me when I felt a pain on my arm, looked down, and saw one of the monkeys biting me! He didn't break the skin, so I'm good, but I was pretty over the monkey festival after that.

Sunglasses theif.

Megan, Allison and I heard that there was a public bus that could take you out to the sunflower fields that Lopburi is also known for, so we spent at least an hour getting on various buses, waiting for others, and generally experiencing a lot of confusion. We never made it to the sunflower fields, so we gave up and headed back to Suphan.

It was fun seeing what the monkey festival was all about, but I am definitely itching to get out of cities in general and spend time on the beach or in the mountains. We have Monday off of school next week so it is looking like we will be able to get to a beach, so excited!

In case you are interested (why wouldn't you be), here is a video I found that gives you a good idea of the monkey festival.