Royal ruins and aggressive monkeys

We have now concluded the first half of our trip in Thailand with a 12-hour night bus trip back up to Bangkok, and after seeing ruins at two cities we are about to head east to Khao Yai National Park.

The last few days we stayed on an island on the Indian Ocean side of Thailand called Ko Phi Phi, famous for the containing the beach from the movie The Beach (which of course we took a day-long boat trip to see and snorkel around other islands). Ko Phi Phi was unfortunately equally overcrowded with tourists and the resulting Thai hawkers trying to get you to take their boat, or stay at their guest house, or buy their goods. But I still got to go diving again! The sea life was even more spectacular here than in Ko Tao and I got to see six turtles on my second dive as well as lots of pufferfish, barracuda, eels, lionfish and pipefish!

So today was pretty busy since we arrived in Bangkok around 6am and took a train to Ayuthaya, the former royal Siamese from the 14th to 18th C. The temple and palace ruins here were beautiful, and despite the scorching heat, we enjoyed not being surrounded tourists at every turn as on the islands. We then took a train to Lopburi, a city literally crawling with monkeys! They were on the telephone wires, on the sidewalk, in stores, and when we went to this old temple that was their main "habitat," Ceci and I each almost got attacked by monkeys that wanted our water bottles! It was almost creepy with about 100 monkeys all around us and just this little Thai boy with a stick offering to sell his services of "protection."

Now just waiting for the next train that will take us to Thailand's oldest nature reserve.