Monkey Business in Lopburi

Picking up where we left off the last time about tigers, the strangest thing I have ever seen by far happened to be in Lopburi province, located about 150 north of Bangkok. If you are ever in Lopburi town try visiting the army zoo.

Go to the tiger cage and you may be surprised to see two grown tigers sharing the same enclosure with two dogs. The two local dogs seemed to be easy meat for the tigers should daily rations be reduced. But this has never happened because of an incident several years ago. A tigress at the zoo had given birth to two cubs but had refused to feed them. The superintendent of the zoo had no choice but to take the cubs home. His dog had given birth at about the same time. So the cubs were fed dog’s milk. In time, the dog adopted the tigers as her own. All the more so when the tigress continued rejecting her babies. The cubs grew up accepting the dog as their mother and the other dogs as their siblings. Now all share the same cage in the zoo. And when the tigers get a little playful, a sharp bark from the dog and they would run timidly for cover. It may have been a case of her bark being fiercer than her bite, but even tigers know that you do not cross your mother even if you outweigh her by 200kgs.

Some may argue that more impressive are the tigers who walk with the monks at a temple in Kanchanaburi. However, I have only seen this on TV and have not had a chance to pay a visit there yet.

While some people may miss seeing the tigers living with the dogs, if you are in Lopburi town, there is very little chance that you would miss another animal that had brought fame to Lopburi. They are the monkeys, which are seen walking around town by the hundreds. Every year a special feast is held for them. Unlike the tigers and the dogs which people find rather cute, the monkeys can be very mischievous and sometimes even downright intimidating, especially the big males. And the way they look at women sometimes make you wonder what exactly is going through their minds. Probably did not differ much from what was going through my mind then. They say the wise think alike and fools seldom differ after all.

There was once a case where a car had knocked down one of their brethren and a group of monkeys had actually taken matters into their own hands and attacked the car with stones and sticks. The driver was smart enough to lock his car and not come out to face their wrath and instead drove off before much damage was done to his vehicle.

Visitors to the area are warn before hand not to do anything that would harm the monkeys, which can be found in large numbers at the Phra Prang Sam Yot (Three Pagoda) ruins and the San Phra Kan Temple about 200 metres away. There is usually a group of children hanging around as vigilantes armed with their catapults ready to offer their assistance when help is needed. I actually witnessed a Caucasian man took out his camera and was about to insert a new roll of film when a monkey managed to snatch it away and made off with it to the top of the ruins. The children came with their catapults but before the monkey threw the film down, it actually managed to pull out the whole roll of film and expose it. Shortly after the incident, I was standing innocently snapping photographs when I felt my pants being tugged. Before you know it there was a monkey sitting on my head, peering down at my face. It would have been comical even to me had it not been for the fact that it was trying to take away my sunglasses. Without trying to appear as though I was picking a fight with him, I managed to hang on to the sunglasses with one hand and my camera with the other. After failing to get my Ray Ban the monkey decided to vent its frustrations on my moustache. I can assure you that having your moustache plucked by a frustrated monkey was not the most pleasant of sensations. Luckily before more of my facial hairs were removed the vigilantes appeared with their catapults and off went the monkey in double time. That seemed to be about the only language they understand. Boys plus catapults equal bad news for monkeys.

The locals have gotten quite used to these monkeys and had learned to live side by side with them. However, precautions are always taken like fixing grill on your windows and doors and fixing your TV antennas in inverted dishes to prevent the monkeys from getting to them. Still local folklore had it that the monkeys would sometimes do things which are so very human. One of them being travelling the modern way. The trains from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, of which there are seven daily, pass right through the heart of monkey town. A few monkeys had been known to hitch a ride on top of the trains to visit distant cousins in Chiang Mai and returning to Lopburi a few days later, presumably with a few tales to tell the folks back home. Why walk to Chiang Mai when there is a perfectly reliable train service available? Makes perfect sense.

Man and monkey did not always exist so harmoniously side by side in Lopburi town. There was a time when the monkeys were quite a handful and making quite a nuisance of themselves at the local wet market. One day a vegetable seller decided she had had enough of their nonsense and decided to get her own back at them. She presented them with a special gift, her Trojan horse, so to speak. This comes in the form of prawn paste or belacan. For those not quite familiar with the Malay proverb, macam kera kena belacan, let me say that for some reason or other prawn paste brings on an allergic reaction of volcanic proportions in primates. The itching epidemic of such magnitude afflicting the monkey population of Lopburi town had never been seen again since. Following that the council of elders governing the monkey world must have sat down and passed an edict that all monkeys may only roam freely within certain demarcated areas that include the ruins, temples and train station. Take a train to Chiang Mai if you must, but venture not into the wet market. The humans there take no prisoners. The food is not up to scratch anyway.