I headed back to Bangkok to see Yindee for a few days before my flight to Myanmar. We decided to take couple of day trips, so here’s a quick report on what we got up to!
First trip we visited Lopburi. It’s a city of Temples and Monkeys! It’s about 3 hours ride from Bangkok by train. We actually ended up spending only 5 hours in the city, meaning we’d spent more time going there and back by train than exploring it, but in truth we saw what we wanted to see and it was just too hot to stay longer!
Lopburi itself is over 1000 years old, and their evidence that humans lived in the area as long ago as 3000 or 4000 years. It was briefly the capital of the Ayutthaya kingdom in the 17th century.
First off we headed to Phra Prang Sam Yod, aka the Monkey Temple. It’s very Khmer in it’s design, which I like.
The approach to the temple demonstrated exactly why Lopburi has it’s reputation for being over run by monkeys, they were everywhere outside the temple and then all over the temple entrance and the temple itself!
Wandering around Lopburi you can see a few more cool ruins. I don’t think it’s as interesting as Ayutthaya or Sukhothai but it was still good to see and I felt like I was completing the set of Thai ruined temple cities!
We visited the Narari national museum too which had some cool objects and artifact’s on display.
Koh Kham
There are 2 Koh Kham’s in Thailand, so to clarify we visited the one reached from Sattahip. It’s administered by the Thai Navy and on the days it’s open only 300 people are allowed to take the ferry boats over. We had stayed in Sattahip the night before after arriving late from Bangkok by mini van. Many people had arrived early and we had needed to get at least some sleep so ended up on the last boat time over, meaning we only had about 4 hours on the island but that was ok. We did hear some others speaking English or other non-Thai language but I was the only Farang (basically a Thai word for white person) so that was pretty cool.
Everyone was required to wear life jackets to go in the water which was actually pretty good for me as I suck at swimming! We spent our time either in the water or chilling on the beach. The island is pretty small and has some nice views! The water is beautiful, it was really fun to visit and enjoy some beach time!
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After a couple more days in Bangkok with Yindee it was then time to move on to my next destination, Myanmar!
2 Comments
Bama
I had never heard about Lopburi before, and it’s fascinating to see a Khmer-style temple by the street. I’ve been thinking of visiting Ayutthaya, and now I think I need to spend more time in the country to visit Lopburi as well.
Dave Does The Travel Thing
I do really like Ayutthaya, if you were just visiting one place i’d advise there. But yes Lopburi is cool to check out and from Ayutthaya you could actually just do it in an afternoon, it’s not far by train 🙂