Eric: Quick note before retelling the day's events -- A few days ago, we decided not to go to Angkor Wat. Well, more precisely, I decided not to go. Before we left, I had my mind set on going, and up until Day 11 or so, I still did. Seeing Angkor Wat is on my life's pretty short "to do" list, so it seemed like I'd never get a better chance than this. Carrie was interested, but never as invested in going as I was.
Unfortunately, it became increasingly clear to both of us that it was going to be a big struggle to go. Getting there from the north of Thailand would either entail (1) a really expensive flight from Chiang Mai, or (2) a full day or more of travel by bus and train. In the perfect world, option 1 would be the choice, but in the world of graduate students and violin teachers, option 2 was the more realistic one. But even with the finances flying direct to Angkor Wat would mean skipping several places between the north and Bangkok, including Lopburi, home of the mischievous monkeys and the one place in Thailand Carrie was most looking forward to seeing. But being the angel she is, she never ruled Angkor Wat out of the picture.
What I started to see was that it was going to be a huge pain in the rear to go, and the polar opposite to a more relaxed, wu-wei approach to travel. So I told Carrie that I was willing to let it go. We have since decided that we'd like to return to the region someday, perhaps with a more lengthy tour of Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. I hope it works out. The upshot of this is that we are having an extremely leisurely path back to Bangkok.
On to our day. We woke up early. As mentioned in yesterday's post, none of our windows closed, so the sounds of the street had unfettered access to our room. We heard dogs fighting, people talking way too loudly, and trucks blasting commercials. That last part is a bit odd, even for Thailand. Throughout our trip, we've heard occasional trucks blaring something from speakers in the back. We've usually figured out that they were political speeches or similar attempts to garner votes. But in Lopburi, the trucks blare commercials.
The one I remember particularly well was the one that was loud enough to get me out of bed and look out the window to find the source of the racket. The truck was moving slowly by at 7:04 am, pictures of pizza on either side of the bed of the truck, and I caught "hot dog" in the stream of unfamiliar language. Having seen pizzas before with hot dogs on them, I knew I wasn't hallucinating and was thereby educated about the ways that Thai marketers bring their messages to the masses.
Carrie: So Eric and I have been betting on who would see the first monkey. In the morning when he was downstairs in the shower, I was picking out my clothes for the day when I heard a rattle out our second story window. It startled me because E and I had talked all about how rickety the windows were. The tin awning outside the window rattled again, and I could see a shape through the white gauze curtains. So that got me thinking it was a cat, but geez it was pretty loud for a cat. When I pulled back the curtain, I was face to face with a monkey. He let go of the window screen and shambled off along the awning.
Eric: By 8:00, we had packed, checked out, and moved to a nice hotel just down the street. Our definition of "nice" has certainly changed as a result of this trip. "Nice" now means that you have a private bathroom, are furnished with towels, and have a trash can in the room. To put things in perspective, our "nice" hotel doesn't have hot showers. Both places charge 200 baht per night. That's $6. When you're only paying $6 for a place to sleep, hot water in your shower is a luxury.
As our trip is growing more leisurely, we didn't have an agenda for the day. We wandered a bit, and I had roasted bananas dipped in a coconut/caramel glaze for breakfast. They were delicious. They cost 30 cents.
I was getting a bit shaggy, so I headed to the barber right next to our hotel. I sat down, was able to pretty easily use gestures to show him what I wanted done, and sat back. Here I am:
(About all of the yellow: The king, whose color is yellow, was born on a Monday, which is why you see so much yellow on Mondays. All of the barbers wore yellow shirts under their smocks).
The haircut is fine. Afterwards, he removes the yellow robe and shakes it off. I still had the towel on my neck, so I waited for him to shake it off, and was looking at the price chart to see how much it would cost and thinking about how I could request a few Q-Tips. That didn't happen. He put the robe back on, grabbed a cotton ball, dipped it in some liquid, and started applying it to my sideburns. He then grabbed a straight razor and proceeded to shave my face. That was a little odd, I thought, but not so out of the ordinary and let it happen. I hadn't shaved in two days, but was planning to return to the hotel room immediately after the cut to shower and shave. Shaving, especially dry-shaving, a couple of days of stubble hurts. I tried not to be a total wuss, and reined in my impulse to flinch. Perhaps that is why the shave was spotty and needed to be touched up later.
The weird part came next. He put some sort of powder on my forehead, ears, and nose -- pretty much every surface he had not yet cut. He then ran the razor over the rest. That's right, not only did I get my first second-party straight razor shave today, but for the first time in my life I had my forehead shaved. Of what, I have no idea. Better safe than sorry, I guess. My nose, and all the external parts of my ears are likewise fuzz-free. Throughout this entire process, I am stealing occasional looks at Carrie in the mirror, who can hardly contain her amusement.
After a brief cell-phone call, my barber/hair removal technician got back to work by cleaning my ears. A metal instrument like a chisel with no sharp edge was used to remove my ear wax, followed by a Q-Tipping, and--this is hilarious--using his forefinger to deliver a brief "pop" on that little piece of cartilage that covers the ear canal from the front. Ha!
After trimming my nose hairs and dousing my face and entire hair line (what little of it there is) with a alcohol-based aftershave, he gave me a short back and shoulder rub. The whole process took about three quarters of an hour, and cost me 60 baht, or $1.90. We stumbled out of the barber both bemused and confused, and headed back to the hotel where I briefly showered and finished off the stubble which the barber had mercifully left.
Carrie: Eric didn't even notice the other perks his fellow patrons were receiving including knuckle cracking and chiropractic care.
Eric: We left again, spending a couple of hours during the hot part of the day in an internet cafe, keeping y'all updated about our goings-on. On our way out of our hotel, we came face-to-face with a monkey in the halls:
Recall that this town is overrun with monkeys, and that nearly every business is open-air, and it's not too surprising.
After a light, late lunch of dim-sum, we resumed our wanderings and stumbled on these great ruins of a temple complex that was originally built in the 14th Century and renovated in the 17th. There were some great photo opportunities (I'm in the tree in the 3rd picture):
After the ruins, we headed to the local monkey hang out. In addition to our former hotel's awning the monkeys spend a lot of time handing from telephone wires and crawling over buildings. We saw two of them fighting on some wires while one urinated on the street below. We're wearing our hats and staying under the awnings.
It's really odd to see, because they are as numerous as people in their small corner of Lopburi, and infinitely mischevious. We watched one of them sneak behind an old woman and steal a large bunch of parsley out of her bag, then run only about 4 feet away and stare at her while he ate it. At the ruins, the picture below is one of the more comical things we saw: several monkeys, at different points, tried to suckle at the teat of the Buddha statue. You could see their little tongues moving. It was hysterical.
