One Last Look at Lopburi

Manda writes:

We were all set to board the Bangkok bus this morning but we couldn't leave Lopburi without one final look at the monkeys. So over we went to San Phra Kan again and the temple monkeys did not disappoint.

We thought we were lucky to arrive at feeding time yesterday but as we walked over to where the majority of them were hanging out, we realised that these animals are fed constantly throughout the day. Donations are used to buy fresh supplies which, along with the tidbits visitors bring to feed the hordes, means that these monkeys are never short of a meal. No wonder some of them look overweight (a few had the body shape of a chubby cat - think Garfield!).

"Is it just me or is this spaghetti?"

There were more fresh vegetables, nuts and jelly sweets laid out on the ground for them. As usual the older ones would get first pickings before the younger ones were allowed anywhere near the feast. We held out some snacks of our own and a few of the monkeys ran over immediately. They looked expectantly at the rattling packet - I guess variety is always a good thing. We had fun feeding them and they enjoyed eating, so it was a fair trade.

Like most of the shops in town, the mobile kiosk owner had a long pole handy to beat off thieving monkeys. We saw an angry vendor waving a pole at one of the little devils who had just snatched a small bottle of drink. She seemed irritated and determined to get it. She succeeded; the thief dropped the loot, looked back defiantly and opened its mouth wide (imagine the mouth made into an O shape, bearing no teeth) as a warning sign. She seemed oblivious to this aggressive display and has obviously seen it too many times for it to have any effect whatsoever. Then she went for it again and this time the monkey scarpered.

This yoghurt drink ain't 'alf bad!

It took three hours to get to Bangkok by air con bus. Now that we are back at Stef and Am's, we'll start packing for our next trip to Vietnam tomorrow.

Ian adds: When we got back, I asked Stef and Am to look at some directions I'd written for the bus driver on the way to Lopburi. I'd wanted to ask "Can we get off at San Pra Kan please?" so that we didn't shoot straight past it and have to find our way back from the new city to the old city. I did the usual thing of going through the phrase book, translating word-for-word and applying my rudimenatary knowledge of Thai sentence construction.

What I ended up with was, I hoped: "We can get off at San Pra Kan, no?" I'd written this down phonetically, but knowing that I may not be too clear speaking it, I also did something very brave - I copied down the the Thai characters for the phrase, copied from the tiniest examples in the phrase book on a very jumpy bus. What I ended up with looked like Thai. When it came to the crunch, I'd said my phrase, got 'the look' in return ("Was he just speaking Thai to me?"). So, I pulled out the Thai version I'd written/drawn, and got more confused looks. The notepad then got passed around the front of the bus, to every row, the conductor and the driver. Somehow, they deciphered what I had written, though, despite the confused looks. We had been dropped off at San Pra Kan as requested.

So, what did my note read? Well, the best translation back to English would be: "We possibly/maybe get off at San Pra Kan, definitely not." I'd picked the wrong word for 'can' (maybe/possible instead of 'are able to'), and my questioning 'no?' at the end had been the equivalent of 'don't'.

I'd basically been saying in pigeon Thai: "Please don't drop us at San Pra Kan". Yet somehow, we got right where we wanted to!