No Bananas in Monkey Town!

Many would say that this is a strange title for this post - I would offer little argument except that I was present throughout this weekend away with my sister and after such an experience, this title seems to fit. I feel I should provide a bit of a back story in order to provide sufficient context.

This weekend was my birthday weekend. I thank all of you who sent me birthday emails, SMS messages, messages in general or phone calls. One's birthday is a wonderful day to be reminded of all of the people around the world who you call friends and to be reminded that all around the world one has friends who care enough to send a message. My birthday conveniently fell on a Saturday and so I had the weekend free to celebrate. This birthday was unique for several reasons not to mention it being my first birthday outside of the country. It was also the first time that I was in school for my birthday. My birthday has always fallen during the summer. In school growing up and in university, my birthday always fell outside of the regular school terms. Last year, my birthday came the day before graduation and while some may argue that I was still in school, I would disagree. This year however, I was in school. I was in class on Friday and I was in class on Monday. I wasn't a student, and some may argue that this is an important detail, I however don't like to pick nits.

For my birthday, I wanted to do two different things - have a great meal of real lasagna and red wine and travel with my sister to some place we hadn't been before. Given that I'm 9 hours by bus from my sister and the nearest decent Italian restaurant, this proved to be a bit difficult, but wasn't an insurmountable task. I ended up flying from Lampang to Bangkok on the small little plane that departs from our small little airport twice daily and arrived in Bangkok about an hour later. Lampang's airport is a one room airport with one small runway and services about 60 people a day. It's in the middle of town and about 10 minutes from every part of town. Flying into Bangkok, I landed at the new Suvarnabhumi International Airport in BKK. While I have been here before, flying straight from Lampang provided an interesting contrast. In Bangkok, I taxied for about 15 minutes as compared to the 30-40 second taxi in Lampang. There are many other contrasts and comparisons but they all fall along the traditional modern vs. rural city juxtaposition. I made my way into the city which proved to be arduous as it was Friday and there was traffic. I finally reached Taryn's apartment and we headed out. The one thing that kept me going was this intense desire to eat lasagna. We did finally get to a great little Italian restaurant and I had my lasagna. It was positively wonderful. The house wine was a Cabernet and tasted just fine (it didn't hurt that it's been a while since I've had any wine).

The next morning, my actual birthday, I woke up to several text messages from friends (one actually called at midnight and woke me up to say Happy Birthday - it was a bit annoying at the time, but the thought and gesture is appreciated) and headed out. Taryn and I were off to the train station to catch the train to Lopburi. After fulfilling my desire for Italian food, we set off in search of a town neither of us had visited. Lopburi fit the bill. Lopburi is well known for two things - being a former stronghold of the Khmer empire and a powerful city during the Ayudhaya period and their monkeys. There is a troop of monkeys that essentially live in the city. There presence is tolerated by the community and even encouraged. They came to inhabit an old temple in town after their native habitat was over-run by the expanding city. With no place to relocate them to, they were simply left to inhabit this temple. It's now developed into a tourist attraction of sorts - there is even a festival in February where the town puts together a celebration/feast for the monkeys and every one gorges themselves (monkeys included). We took the train and arrived in the early afternoon and headed off to eat lunch after finding a place to stay. We then headed out to find the monkeys and check out the ruins. We came across the monkeys and found exactly what we had expected - monkeys inhabiting an old temple. We walked in and the person at the entrance handed us a bamboo stick. I assumed that it was in case the monkeys tried to attack you, but in reality it was a toy that the monkeys really enjoyed playing with. They would climb up on the stick and you would spin it around. There was quite a bit of commotion when one started to play - all the others wanted to join in. We spent the day walking around and then headed to dinner at a little place called the White House and no, we didn't eat at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We then started out in search of a birthday cake. Now, Thailand isn't known for their baked goods and while you can find some good cake in BKK, it's hard to find it elsewhere. Instead of suffering through bad cake, I went Thai-style. By Thai-style, I don't mean what Thai's will eat for their birthday (they'll suffer through bad cake), but what I would considered to be the equivalent of a cake/dessert that is delicious which is found in Thailand. There is this dessert called roti which is a thin pancake or crepe like thing which sometime has bananas, egg, chocolate, fruit or other assorted things inside with sweetened condensed milk and sugar on top all fried together. My favorite is filled with bananas. We found a roadside stall which sold roti but alas there were no bananas. This led to the interesting observation that in Lopburi, a town well known for their monkey population, there were no bananas (hence the post title). We had a bit of a laugh and then ordered a plain roti, bought some candles and ice cream and proceeded to have my birthday cake. I took some pictures and I even took a video which is hilarious (and I'll try to post them today or tomorrow) for you all to see. It was wonderful. The next day we finished up sightseeing and then I headed back up to Lampang and Taryn headed back down to BKK and that was the end of my birthday extravaganza.

Bye!

RM