Lop Buri is pronounced "Lope - Burnee" and is the home to a very unique group of animals. The Macques Monkey have overrun the central part of town! In the square is a group of three stupas built by the Cambodians in the 1300's and surrounded by a relatively modern hotel and other shops. At some point in time the monkeys came to town and decided to live in the square and then needed more room. Hotel guests were run out of their rooms by the little monkeys when they would rattle the doors and disturb the guests. They eventually had to close all the buildings and they are now run by the monkeys. Even tourists have to be wary of them. When we walked up, one monkey jumped on the back of our guide! A local chased it off and for a few dollars kept them off of the rest of us while feeding them and giving us a show.
Also in this town is a temple complex that is older than the city and maybe older than Thailand. Due to the shapes of some of the ornamental towers, they have dated the complex to the 1300's but some buildings are from the mid-1600's.
We had lunch in a lovely jungle retreat with our own pavilion and shared plates of delicious Thai foods.
A short drive later we stopped to see the most beautiful Buddha known in a temple named Wat Mahathat built in the 1100's. We also visited a Thai Folk Museum.
The most fun of the day was tasting a Thai delicacy of Fried Bugs!! We ate bamboo worms, silk worms, crickets, grasshoppers, flies, roaches, frogs and chicken skin. All was washed down with Thai Saki!! They didn't taste too bad, mostly they had the flavor of the oil they were cooked in.
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