Saturday 26th November 2022
We wanted to get the first train of the morning (which was around 10.30am) so we’d be in time for the monkey festival, which just so happens to be taking place in Lopburi today. We ordered a Grab from the hotel, but no drivers were available. We were just about to give up and cross the busy road that the hotel’s on so we could try to flag down a passing taxi / tuk tuk / songthaew when a driver finally accepted the journey. It’s good we allowed plenty of time to get to the station!
Like the other stations we’ve been to in Northern Thailand, Nakhon Sawan station is very attractive looking with a steam train out the front.
We went inside and tried to buy our tickets (this was one of the trains you couldn’t book tickets online for) only to be told that the train wasn’t running today and the next one wasn’t until 12.42pm. So we had a long wait at the station. There wasn’t much we could do, as we had our luggage with us and there’s not a huge amount in the near vicinity (the market outside the station didn’t seem very open) so I used the time to read my kindle. Annoyingly the train was then over an hour late, so we ended up spending much longer that we’d have liked at the station!
We were in the 3rd class carriage for the journey, and the train was packed and quite hot and stuffy. However, by this point we were just glad to be on the train.
We stayed at the Hop Inn in Lopburi, the same chain we’d stayed at in Nakhon Sawan. It’s a bit like Thailand’s version of premier inn, basic but clean, comfortable, and cheap. The one in Lopburi was further out of town than we’d have liked, however we only booked our accommodation a couple of days earlier and because of the monkey festival (which we also hadn’t known about until recently) most places were fully booked.
By the time we got a taxi to our hotel, it was late afternoon and so we’d missed the last monkey feeding at 4pm. We noticed there’s a 24hr self service laundry right next to our hotel, so decided to go out for an early dinner and then do some much needed laundry.
We dropped our bags then headed out for a walk. There were millions of birds right outside the hotel, the noise was almost deafening. It’s not the first place in Asia we’ve noticed extremely loud birds, but was a bit surreal being right on a main road.
It felt like a lot of restaurants around here were closed (despite google maps saying they were open). We spotted what looked like a night market and hoped there would be some good street food options, however it was only selling fresh foods and clothes (and looked like it was winding down for the day). We were just about to give up and go to the Big C supermarket (which is huge!), when we came across Sweet Lemon Kitchen & Bakery, which was fortunately open. They didn’t have a lot of the menu options, but we were able to order a Thai omelette with shrimp and some rice with stir fried pork. The food was good, though not exceptional.
After dinner, we headed back to do our laundry and watch a couple of episodes of Manifest on Netflix before bed.
Sunday 27th November 2022
Lopburi doesn’t have any Grab cars but does have Grab motorbikes. We ordered a couple to take us into the centre of town. Both drivers appeared to be in the same location, however Pete’s turned up about 10 minutes later, whereas mine didn’t move at all. We decided to try and ask Pete’s driver if he could phone mine (as we don’t speak Thai). When we showed him the booking with the drivers details he immediately knew what we were asking and also was able to just speed dial the driver from his phone. I guess they thought it was odd having two bookings to and from the exact same locations and thought it was a mistake? Anyway, my driver turned up within 10 minutes, and we were both on our way!
Our first stop was Phra Prang Sam Yot, the famous monkey temple. I was a little nervous going inside as I’d heard stories and seen photos of monkeys jumping on people’s back and stealing things, and didn’t particularly like the idea of being attacked by a bunch of monkeys (there are a lot of them hanging out at the temple). Fortunately they were all very sedate. While we were there. another tourist even went up to a baby monkey and touched its paw. The mother was holding on tightly to the baby’s tail and I was half expecting her to get aggressive, but they were both very placid.
You can also go inside the temple, which is a monkey free zone but does have a lot of resident bats.
Monkeys also just wander the streets, it’s quite odd seeing them around town, strolling along or chilling out on fences and vehicles.
From the monkey temple, we could walk to all the sights within Lopburi. As well as large, partly intact temples there are also loads of much smaller ruins scattered around Lopburi, such as Wat Indra, which we briefly visited.
We continued walking until we reached Pratu Chai, one of the old city gates.
Right by Pratu Chai is a restaurant, Pad Thai Buri Ka Prao Hom, where we stopped for lunch. We ordered a chicken pad Thai and a crispy pork pad Thai. The waiter then told us we should order the special appetiser which was a specialty of the restaurant. We had no idea what it was (the menu was in Thai only) but decided to give it a go. It ended up being some crispy prawn dumplings, which were superb! The pad Thai were a bit different to the traditional pad Thai we’d had so far. The presentation was excellent, but I think I prefer the simpler, more traditional pad Thai to this restaurant’s more modern interpretation.
After lunch, we continued walking along the city wall (although there’s not much left of it) until we reached Chaichanasongkhram Fort. There’s not a huge amount of the fort remaining but the couple of walls that are still standing are quite impressive.
Right by the fort is an old water gate, Patu Chong Kud, which was built for water irrigation and as a navigation route between the city moats.
We continued to Wat San Palio, which is slightly different as it’s an ancient Christian building built by French Jesuit priests. A lot of it is in ruins, but you can tell it must have been impressive back in the day.
We next headed to Wat Bandai Hin. This temple is relatively intact, and has a beautiful and very ornate chedi.
Our next temple was Wat Phrasi Rattana Mahathat, another of the paid entry temples with a 50 baht fee. This is a vast temple site, and there are quite a lot of chedis and ruins of ancient buildings to see.
By this point we were melting in the heat, so went into Baan Sahai Cafe for a cool drink and an ice cream. The cocktails were very cheap at 90 baht (about £2.50) each, so I decided to give one a go. Pete had a strawberry ice cream float. We also shared some mango sticky rice and a scoop of coconut ice cream. They were nice, but the mango sticky rice wasn’t as good as the one we’d had in Chiang Mai.
It was now mid-afternoon and getting time to go back to the hotel and pick up our bags, then catch our train to Ayutthaya. We ordered a couple of Grab bikes and mine turned up first. He didn’t have any Grab branding on his clothing and his bike registration number was different to what the app said it should be, but he knew my name and where I was going so I thought nothing of it. However we then drove in the opposite direction to what I expected and went down a load of small country roads for what felt like ages (the most direct, and quickest, route to the hotel is down a main road). I was starting to get a little nervous as I had no money on me and my phone doesn’t have internet access unless it’s connected to wifi.
Fortunately the Big C soon came into view. We’d gone way past the hotel, but were finally on the main road I recognised. Pete had beaten me back to the hotel, despite his Grab bike arriving 10 minutes after mine (he waited until I was on mine before ordering, to avoid them being confused by two identical routes at the same time). We suspect the Grab driver was unauthorised or something and so went the convoluted back routes to avoid being stopped by the police or anyone.
As there are no Grab cars in Lopburi, we’d asked the hotel to order us a taxi as we didn’t fancy being on the back of bikes with our luggage. The taxI soon arrived and took us the train station, which is another attractive building with a steam train in front.
This time we were in the 2nd class air conditioned carriage, which were so much better than the 3rd class fan carriages we’d previously travelled in.
We’d not traveled far when we weee served a meal to our seats, which was very unexpected. We’d not ordered any food, apparently it just comes with the ticket type we bought. It was slightly odd – a tub of hot rice with two vacuum packed packets of cold chicken in sauce (one turmeric and one spicy). I think mixing the chicken with the rice is meant to heat it, but it ends up being barely lukewarm. I think if it was piping hot it’d have been ok, but as it was, I wasn’t a fan. I did quite like the accompanying biscuits and banana chips though.
It was evening by the time we arrived in Ayutthaya. We got a tuk tuk to the Siri Guesthouse (where we were staying), checked in, and dropped our bags. We then went out to explore the night market. It wasn’t as good as we were expecting, everything seemed to be winding down even though it was only 8pm. Perhaps because of the impending thunderstorm? We bought some coconut pancakes from one of the few stalls that were still cooking. They were ok, but I wouldn’t buy them again.
We got back to the hotel just in time, it started pouring with rain a couple of minutes later. Hopefully it’ll have brightened up by tomorrow!
Emma and Pete’s Asian Adventure 