Lop Buri
Edit: I’ve added some photos, but not too many as I realised most from Lop Buri are on Jim’s phone. Maybe one day I’ll get around to it!
I’ll pick the story up where I left off a few days ago, where we were about to leave Chiang Rai, in Thailand’s north.
We really enjoyed our stay in Chiang Rai. Both the hotel, and the town itself were really interesting, with plenty to do to keep us out of trouble.
But it was time to move on, so we headed to the airport for our flight back to Bangkok. All went to plan with our Air Asia flight of just over an hour, putting us at the airport at around lunchtime, a couple of hours before our train out of there.
So we found the airport food court and had a really delicious soup for lunch, then walked over to the train station with our bags to wait for our mid-afternoon train.
It might seem a bit odd that we’re leaving as soon as we’ve arrived, but Lop Buri is a relatively small place, and it was just easier to fly back to Bangkok and train it out of there, rather than get the bus from Chiang Rai back to Chiang Mai, then the train all the way back to Lop Buri. Anyway, there was a method to our madness, and it was a relatively easy transition throughout the day between the various modes of transport…until the very end…
We arrived at Lop Buri station 2, which is the long distance station, out of town. That’s fine, because they operate a free shuttle service to Lop Buri station 1, which is right in town. No problem, we’ll jump on that, then find a cab to our accommodation.
Step one was easy, getting to the other station, but then we just could not get a cab. After asking around a bit, trying to get one online etc, we decided there was nothing for it but to start walking, and hope that one would just appear next to us (which usually happens quite a lot).
On this occasion though, no such cab appeared, so we ended up walking the 2.5km or so, with our packs, to our accommodation. It’s a good thing we had a practice with our bags a few months ago hiking up a mountain on the Sunshine Coast!
Of course all the locals thought we were nuts, not just for walking with our bags, but for walking at all. We arrived at our accommodation, which is a beautiful little bungalow over a fish-filled pond next to a rice paddy. With two rooms and two bathrooms, plus lots of outdoor deck space we had plenty of room to spread out too.
It’s nowhere near anything though, so the owner drove us back into town to grab some dinner from the markets, then drove us back again, which was much appreciated.
Lop Buri is well off the tourist trail so there isn’t a huge list of tourist activities to do, but there is certainly enough for us, interspersed with some relaxing. As it turned out, Heidi woke up the next morning with a raging fever and spent the entire day in bed. We hung around our bungalow playing games and reading, and then Jim popped into town to grab us some food. After lunch Hamish and I went out to have a look at Monkey Temple and the old palace/museum.
The town is very old (thousands of years). Monkey Temple is like a mini version of Angkor Wat (and used to have lots of monkeys but they were moved on due to their bad behaviour). We did see about a dozen or so monkeys, but they seemed to know to keep away from people and stay up on the buildings.
The old palace and museum was quite interesting and also very old (in use in the 1600’s). Lop Buri was a real melting pot of cultures even back then, and the king at the time went to the Palace of Versailles on invitation of the French, and also met the Pope at the Vatican, so he was clearly well-travelled. Lop Buri itself was a bit of a staging post, receiving goods from Europe and distributing them further into Asia, and vice versa.
Heidi was still unwell when we got back, so we had a quiet and very simple dinner on our deck (2 minute noodles!) and then had an early night.
The next day she was well enough to be up and about although not really eating much so we had a slow stroll to the zoo, which we wandered around for a few hours. It was just a small (and very cheap) zoo, but sadly some of the exhibits were not really in great condition and the animals did not really look too happy about their lot, and with good reason too. We did get to be up very close to both orangutans and chimpanzees (to the point where they were handing us items such as a bit of wire where a chimpanzee was holding one end and I was holding the other).
There were also plenty of farm animals that we could feed, pat and interact with such as deer, horses, pigs, goats, guinea pigs etc. Plus there were a few snakes (and a bit of a weird snake show), lots of birds and a few other cameos from monkeys and meerkats.
It’s always interesting to see and interact with animals, but a bit distressing to see them having to live in less than ideal conditions. Hopefully at some point the zoo will either perform better economically, or get a good cash injection so they can spend the necessary money to sort it out.
After that, we wandered back into town, then home again, for a final evening on our little deck. Then early the next morning we got a lift to a bus company’s premises to catch a mini van back to Bangkok.
We decided to give that a go rather than the train partly for something different, but also because it was pretty cheap – even when booking two extra seats for our baggage the whole thing only cost us $60 to get us the 2.5 hours back to Bangkok.
Once back there, we caught a Grab to our hotel, which is in a different part of Bangkok to where we stayed a couple of weeks ago. We were too early to check in, so we went down the road to a shopping centre for a look and some lunch, then walked back to check in.
The kids were pretty excited as it’s a ‘proper hotel’, and our room is on the 28th floor. The views are pretty spectacular, and it’s in an interesting part of town, so it’s all pretty good really.
After a swim in the hotel pool, we went out for dinner at a nearby restaurant before heading back to our hotel to watch the world go by from the 28th floor.
This morning we slept in a bit, then went to the hotel’s buffet breakfast, which we all enjoyed (even Hamish – they had chips!). I then did some work while the kids and Jim went to the pool, then we headed out for the day.
First we went to a big park called Lumphini Park, which has been likened to Central Park in New York. I could see the similarities, and it was actually a really nice change to be off the busy streets for a bit.
They also have big water monitors there, so we watched them swimming around – some of them were a couple of metres long and moved through the water in a similar way to crocodiles. The park had free peddle boats on the lake, but were closed from 11:30 until 1:00pm, so we thought we’d hang around there for the hour or so until 1pm rolled around, then duly turned up back at the peddle boats.
Weirdly, the reopening time had changed to 2:00pm, despite there being many staff hanging around there. We (and others who had waited) queried the change but were met with a wall of indifference, so had to cut our losses and move on.
So we jumped on a train and went to the Siam museum, which is an interesting museum that focusses on the ‘Thainess’ of Thailand. It was an odd collection of rooms, but with lots of interactive activities it was quite interesting. I know nothing more about Thai history than I did before I walked in there though.
We then jumped on the train to come back to the hotel for an afternoon swim. We had planned to go out to Chinatown for dinner, but I’d hit the wall, so we just had dinner locally in the Middle Eastern area, where we had a fantastic feed of mutton biryani, butter chicken and various naan breads.
Now back at the hotel, Jim has popped out to take care of the mountain of laundry while I write this update.
Tomorrow we’ll have a slow morning in the hotel listening to the cricket, swimming in the pool, eating our fill at the buffet breakfast and packing up to leave. We then will give the public transport a go to get back to the airport – from here it should be reasonably easy as there is a station 500m from here, and once we’re on the network it’s just a matter of changing at the right spots until we get there.
We’re off to Krabi, in the south tomorrow, for five days in one spot, which will hopefully include swimming, beaches, and relaxing with my book. We’ll see how we go!
