How to coexist with Lopburi’s monkeys

You can’t think of Lopburi, Thailand (ลพบุรี) without thinking of the monkeys that run the town. Scampering across electrical wires, shimmying up and down the sides of buildings, cockily sizing up the tourists visiting ruins, and invading local establishments to the consternation of the scowling owners, the monkeys of Lopburi fear little and are responsible for much of the place’s personality.

Lopburi is a short train ride north from Bangkok – in other words, easy to reach even for the most unimaginative of travelers. The town is full of crumbling old temples – piles of orange bricks and still-impressive pointed structures that sit on lots surrounded by hotels and shops. Walk or bike around Lopburi and you’ll constantly turn a corner and be surprised by another great scene of antiquity and majesty before you.

Lopburi was first settled by people from what is now Pakistan, then became an important location for the Ayutthaya Kingdom of the 1300s, whence the great temples came. Now it is in some ways a typical Thai town, functional, friendly, and relaxed; hot but cheerful. Nearby Ayutthaya is just as impressive, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Lopburi isn’t; maybe it should be.

But at  Lopburi’s train station is an indication of the town’s real inhabitants and leaders: a giant gold-colored monkey seems to strut across the platform, twenty feet high. And as soon as you step out of the station onto Lopburi’s streets, there they are: dozens of monkeys, little brown creatures with their long tails, scooting around and making anything hanging (telephone wires, curtains, some street signs) shake as they climb around.

The monkeys generally keep to themselves, although they share the sidewalk with people and the roads with cars. They’re looking for food, it seems, and know when someone walking by has some or not. If you’re clean, they take no interest in you.

Actually, each night someone was setting out large piles of vegetables and fruit on a big concrete area right outside my hotel. As the sun set, monkeys (believed to be divinely descended) showed up from everywhere, feasting on the free stuff and smacking their little gums avariciously.

When they’d had their fill, they went off (more slowly than when they’d come) and gangs of rats came and took care of the rest. So I figured the little hominids were well fed. As it turns out, they still hope for extra snacks from passing people.

I found this out the hard way one day.

The monkeys of Lopburi

Having bought a bag of diced cantaloupe for less than $1 from a local vendor, I was walking merrily back to my guesthouse in the afternoon, through one of the main monkey areas in town. Carrying the bag in my right hand, a couple monkeys started tagging along with me. Maybe it’s not smart to be strutting around here with a bag of brightly-colored fruit. I quickened my pace.

The little guys following me were small and would scatter when I stomped my feet. (This is what local shop owners do; they all have big sticks they bang on the ground when the monkeys approach their stores. Killing or harming monkeys would be unthinkable.)

Suddenly a rather large monkey jumped up onto my left side, clinging like a baby with its legs around me and staring at me with oddly human eyes. I laughed, and a couple of shop owners nearby saw it and laughed as well. I shooed the unwelcome beast away.

Stomping my way down the hot and dusty street, I thought I might make it back safely, when a big monkey swooped in from behind me on the right side, clawed at my bag and sent the cantaloupe plopping to the ground! Monkeys dove in from everywhere, having a feast at my expense.

“Gaahhh!” I exclaimed, and a shop owner averted her eyes when I looked over, helpless.

I was annoyed – their little human-esque eyes made them seem like children. Who raised these things anyway? You can’t just steal food from people! Then I remembered that they were just wild monkeys. And I couldn’t be angry at them – they outsmarted me after all. The monkeys got the fruit and left me holding the bag. (Isn’t that an old country song?)

“Welcome to Lopburi, fruitman!” the monkeys seemed to sneer at me as they picked through their bounty on the pavement. I went back and bought a new bag of cantaloupe, wrapped it up carefully, and took a more discreet route back to my place.

The ruins of Lopburi

The rest of my time in Lopburi was spent coexisting more smoothly with the monkeys – I ate my food at local food stalls, which the monkeys had learned not to approach due to the watchful, stick-banging ire of the vendors. I even found a Mister Donut, a popular place in Japan, right near my guesthouse where I stopped in for a snack sometimes.

And when I walked around outside, which I did most days in Lopburi, it was to tour the various ruins and ancient temples scattered throughout town. Some had signs explaining their history, but sometimes the signs were only in Thai. It’s mostly without context that you get to know Lopburi; you have to develop a sense of imagination, to picture what the area would have looked like at its height.

It’s hard to take photos in many parts of Lopburi without monkeys in them, but from some of the areas of ruins further from the train station and the main strip of stores the monkeys seemed totally absent. In many of these, there was a quieter sense of calm – tourists weren’t there either. Only birds, often rows of pigeons lined up on still-sturdy walls of fourteenth-century bricks, seemed to call the places home.

Some temples are maintained much more studiously; at one place, with perfect lawns and a sprinkler system, a group of schoolkids in identical blue shirts were visiting on a field trip. This place had a nice museum about the Ayutthaya Period, with real old coins, displays about music, and various valuable relics from the great Kingdom.

Other temples were weedy piles of bricks and stones on small lots, half-crumbled and not rebuilt. Even these downmarket versions of Lopburi temples are captivating however; it’s the sun highlighting these undeniably great remnants of the past standing among the modern buildings and life of town that give them their power, whatever their current state.

If you go to Lopburi you’ll love walking and climbing around the mystical time shift of the place. The monkeys are good companions if you accept that it’s their community and you’re just visiting. This little-discussed gem, so close to Bangkok, is a reason to go to central Thailand all by itself.

Have you ever met wild monkeys?

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