Ayutthaya and Lopburi

I am a weekend warrior!! This weekend I along with friends, headed to Thailand's original Capital and cultural megaplex, Ayutthaya, and then went to Thailand's Monkey Town, Lopburi. I took about a 2 hour bus ride into Ayutthaya and wondered the streets at about 9 p.m. for about an hour with Jessica searching for our guest house. Once we found the much recommended guest house, Tony's Place, we enjoyed dinner and drinks and had an early night. Tony's place was awesome; it was like sleeping in a huge tree house mansion! The next morning we woke up and had an amazing breakfast and proceeded to rent bicycles for the day. Ayutthaya has over 20 temples in such a small area. Ayutthaya is basically a small island surrounded by rivers – it's so unique. As we biked around the town, it was so cool to see all the ruins of a Thailand's former powerhouse and be able to navigate around the city without being at the mercy of bargaining with Tuk Tuk drivers or taxis. Seeing the ruins of the many temples was amazing! You could see and feel the history all around you! A shutter bug's paradise! Too bad all I had was my point and shoot camera!

More on Ayutthaya: http://wikitravel.org/en/Ayutthaya

After temple touring on our bikes, we met up with my friend Taryn who has her teaching placement about 1 hour from Ayutthaya. We handled transportation Thai style; I biked around a bit with Taryn on the back of my bike – which was no easy feat since the bike I was using wasn’t made for such a trip. We all got massages after checking out the only temple not ruined by the Burmese and meandered our way to grab dinner on the river. It was delicious and reasonable. We ate like queens for roughly $20 for the 3 of us!

The restaurant was beautiful; we ate right on a traditional boat on the river along the island of Ayutthaya. It was the perfect ending for our time in Ayutthaya! After dinner, Jessica and I said our good byes to Taryn and jumped our Lopburi bound train, in just the nick of time.

The particular train we jumped on was ok, it did the trick, but it was no “Euro Star,” that's for sure! After about an Hour, we arrived at Lopburi where our friends who teach there greeted us at the train station. We started out the night with plenty of Thai whiskey and exchanged our teaching stories and experiences in general. It was so neat to hear how each of our experiences vary so much! Some people have a completely different dynamic with their administrative staff or Thai teachers than Jessica and I. Let's just say we have to deal with a much more, dramatic and conservative administrative powers that be than others! We then all headed to the local club and danced the night away.

More on Lopburi : http://wikitravel.org/en/Lopburi

The next morning our Lopburi friends showed us around the town, which was so pleasant since the town is really easy to walk around. The town is known for its residents - more specifically its monkeys who roam about. They swing from telephone and electric wires and live in the center of town. It was surreal to see these monkeys just hanging out – no fences or bars, they live in the city! What's more crazy is that these monkey's are pretty aggressive if you get near them, which I chose not to! The stories I've heard was that the monkeys steal from you and put quite a few people in the hospital if you try to resist them taking your things or look at them wrong. The monkeys will seriously hurt you and could possibly give you rabies if they bite you- so you can understand why I chose to just enjoy the sight from afar!( Aplogies for no Lopburi photos but my camera battery died) All in the all, I enjoyed the weekend of seeing sights and meeting up with friends. That's what is so great about going through my TEFL program; I have a network of 60 people whom I trained with and can call up and visit through the many diverse regions of Thailand!