in the land of smiles.: ruins, monkeys and sunflowers.

So onto part 2 of my week of travels!

On Sunday morning, Chelsea and I woke up early to head on and begin our travels. We took the sky train to victory monument and searched around for a minivan to take us to Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand. In Thailand in addition to buses and trains to take you to far away places, there are also minivans that you can hire to travel…they are a lot quicker than buses, but a little bit more expensive. But the quick trip to Ayutthaya, about 1 ½ hours away, only costs 60 baht (about $2). After the quick van ride there, we found a little place to stay for the night, dropped off our stuff, and rented bicycles so we could cruise around and check out all the ruins in the town. It felt good to be back on a bike, kinda like I was back in isla vista…except I was surrounded by huge ancient ruins. Chelsea and I bought a ticket that would get us into all of the ruins that we wanted to see so we could cruise around at our leisure and take in all the sights. The ruins were amazing and each one had cool details and a different set up. I tried to imagine each of the ruins as they had been originally, before they got destroyed by the Burmese army in the 1700’s. in addition to the ruins, we also made a stop by a temple that held a MASSIVE Buddha....pretty impressive. We went back to the street we were staying on and grabbed some dinner from a little restaurant. After dinner, we talked a bike shop owner to let us borrow the bikes for another hour so we could check out the ruins again at night. Ayutthaya has lights that illuminate the ruins till about 9pm every night, so we figured we might as well check them out. It was great to see them at night and to see them in a totally different light. After our night bike ride, we called it a night and headed back to our hotel to pass out.

We woke up early the next morning and walked over to the train station. The lady running our hotel had told us that the train was a much easier way to get to lopburi, our next destination of choice. When we arrived at the train station there was a train there that was about to pull out of the station. One of the attendants asked us where we were going and when we told him, he shouted that the train that was about to leave was the one we needed to be on! they rushed us around and let us cut to the front of the line to buy our tickets, and were so so helpful in trying to stop the train so we could catch it. Unfortunately we weren’t quick enough and the train left literally 5 seconds before we were all set. Oh well. The next train to take us to lopburi wouldn’t be there for another 2 hours. So we bought new tickets and posted up at the train station and people watched and read for the next two hours. Lopburi was about 2 hour train ride away from Ayutthaya and the ticket only cost 13 baht (less than 50cents…!). We hopped on the train and we couldn’t believe how crowded it was! We had to stand up for the first part of the ride until more people got off and there was room for us to sit. The most annoying thing about the train was that there were people who would walk up and down the aisles every 30 seconds trying to sell different food and drinks. This was difficult because we had to stand in the middle of the aisle because that was the only place to stand, and it was hard trying to let them pass by and get around us.

2 hours later we arrived in lopburi and made our way to a hostel that our friend Olivia had recommended to us. The hostel was super cute and run by an adorable couple who had one of the cutest toddlers I’ve ever seen! A note about lopburi….the city is taken over by monkeys. Literally there are monkeys EVERYWHERE…hanging from the wires, running all over the streets and trying to snatch up any food they can get their grubby little hands on! The monkeys seem really cute at first, but man they are vicious! If you don’t fork over your food when they come near you they hiss at you! We made sure to have all our snacks packed away and out of sight so we would be safe from vicious monkeys. It was kinda cool that there just monkeys everywhere, but I made sure not to get too close!

We put all our stuff in our room and asked the owner how to get to the sunflower fields! Lopburi is known for their HUGE sunflower fields and we wanted to check them out for ourselves! We took a city bus to the main terminal in lopburi and jumped on another bus that would drive past the fields. We asked the driver to just drop us off on the side of the road, and we walked about 2km to the fields. These fields were GORGEOUS. Thousands of sunflowers everywhere…it was a bright sunny day and there were these gorgeous mountains that made the perfect backdrop to the endless rows of sunflowers. Chelsea and I took tons of pictures and walked around taking in the beautiful day! There were little stalls set up on the side next to the field that sold flavored sunflower seeds, so Chelsea and I got a little bag of each flavor…chocolate, strawberry and honey flavored..YUM. One of the women working the stall offered to drive us back to the main road on the back of her motorbike and we gladly accepted! They were super friendly and taking a motorbike sound waaaay better than making the trek back. When we got to the end of the road the ladies on the motorbikes drove back, and we were just left there not really sure what to do next. We had no idea when/if another bus would be passing by so that we could get back to the city…so we waited….and waited…and still no bus drove by. I’m sure we looked ridiculous standing on the side of the road looking absolutely clueless…actually I know we looked ridiculous because a bus going the opposite direction filled with thai people stopped right in front of us for a good 2 minutes and the thais on the bus pointed at us and giggled. Then they took grabbed their cameras and started taking pictures from the bus of the silly farang standing on the side of the road. We knew we looked ridiculous so we just smiled and laughed and wondered if maybe someone from the bus would come out and help us. Nope. A minute later the bus zoomed off and left us standing there. We were getting desperate and for a minute we even considered trying to hitchhike back into the city, but just as I was about to stick out my thumb and try to catch a ride a bus came around the corner and we were saved! We waved down the bus and rode it back into town.

We got back to town and grabbed some food and drinks and called it a night. We woke up the next morning to the sound of little monkeys climbing all over the roof of our hotel! We looked out the window and there was a monkey sitting on our windowsill peering into our room! We laughed and headed out down the stairs….where there were 2 monkeys just chilling on the stairs. We didn’t want to get that close and personal with the monkeys so we yelled down to the owner and she came up and shot at the monkeys with her little BB gun. The monkeys got scared off and jumped out the window. Silly monkeys. We packed our bags and headed for the train station; we decided that we would take the train into Bangkok, our next destination where we would catch our bus to koh phi phi. We were able to score seats on the train and 28 baht (90 cents) and 3 hours later we were in Bangkok and ready to set out on our next destination…a tropical island!

Alright, that’s all for today, stay tuned for the last installment of my winter break and the epicness that was koh phi phi.

Love you all!