Laid back in Lop Buri

This historical capital delights visitors with its pleasing mix of architectural styles, history and golden fields.

Manote Tripathi

The Nation

One of Thailand’s oldest towns and the second capital of Siam during the Ayutthaya period, Lop Buri is a dignified city. Rebuilt in the 17th century by King Narai the Great with the help of French architects, its old palaces and temples are a pleasing mix of Thai and Western styles, although today the town is more famous for its monkeys, which seem to have made the urban sprawl their home.

To early travellers, Lop Buri was a juncture of world culture, a blend of Siamese, European and Persian architecture spiced up by Indian and Khmer influences. Now it’s an important military base founded by Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsongkhram.

With traces of its original landscapes still visible, Lop Buri, like Ayutthaya, is a great gateway for anyone interested in Siam’s history. And, at just 153 kilometres from Bangkok, it’s also just right for a weekend break, with dams, waterfalls, fields of golden sunflowers and endless hilltop temples to explore along the way.

Lop Buri is best enjoyed via a circuitous drive so rather than head straight on at Saraburi, you should turn right onto Highway 2 towards Korat (Nakhon Ratchasima) until you reach Muak Lek, then hang a left onto road 2089 towards Wang Muang, the district of Saraburi that borders Lop Buri. During the winter months, this is a wonderful sight, with fields of sunflowers stretching as far as the eye can see.

There’s plenty to see in and around Wang Muang too, including the nearby waterfall, Nam Tok Pa Lan Hin Dad and Pasak Cholasith Dam, the world’s longest earthen dam, which straddles Lop Buri and Saraburi.

There are more sunflower fields to explore as you head into Lop Buri: along roads 3017 and 3333 (in Phattana Nikhom district) and on sections of road 21 leading to Chai Badan district. The dam can also be accessed by road 3017 and is a favourite hangout in the afternoon heat.

Next on the circuit is Lop Buri city, which is well served by road 3017. As the seat of power for King Narai, the city was where the monarch chose to receive most of his overseas visitors and it was only after his death that the government offices moved to Ayutthaya.

At the heart of the town stands Narai Ratchaniwet Palace, an epitome of eastern hospitality, diplomacy and modernity. Complete with Roman terracotta pipes and a reservoir, the palace incorporates throne halls, grand banquet halls and royal residences in brick masonry plus an elephant corral.

Then walk over to Kraison Siharat Hall where King Narai, along with French astronomers, observed his first solar and lunar eclipses in 1685 and 1688.

Not to be missed is the Chanthara Phisan Throne Hall, which is captured in a famous painting showing the King reaching down from the throne to grab a document presented by a French envoy. The palace, which is set in a leafy environment with thick foliage providing much-needed shade, is an oasis of tranquillity and perfect for a break.

Near the palace stands the residence of Constantin Phaulkon, the young Greek adventurer-turned-minister in King Narai’s court. Phaulkon was King Narai’s trusted aide and rose to high office under his reign amid widespread scepticism that he was there to convert the king to Christianity, thus allowing France to take over the kingdom. He was executed when the throne changed hands.

A two-storey structure of brick masonry in a mix of Thai and European architectural styles with a big grass lawn, the residence also housed the first French diplomatic mission led by Chavalier de Cheaumont in 1685. Divided into three zones, the property featured a two-storey residence for the French diplomats and a one-storey building with a half-circular porch on the west, a bell tower and a church in the centre and a cluster of two-storey buildings to the east. History buffs will be fascinated by these gracious buildings and it’s worth reading up King Narai and the Greek adventurer before visiting. The residences were left empty after the monarch passed away and renovations were finally started in 1863 at the orders of King Rama IV.

Phra Prang Samyod, located just next to the railway road on Narai Road, is a 13th-century Khmer temple built by King Chaivarman VII. Originally housing images of Mahayana Buddhism and then Hindu gods, the temple is now home to hundreds of monkeys that enjoy the annual feasts held there by the authorities. More monkeys can be found at the nearby San Phra Kan shrine. And while it’s true that the monkeys do attract visitors, there are also a nuisance, with many locals complaining about their behaviour.

On the way back to Bangkok, it’s recommended to take Highway 32 to Ayutthaya for a glimpse of the former capital city to complete the circuit. At certain point of the journey, one feels the twin capitals should be brought back to life.

HOW TO GET THERE

It’s recommended to drive in a circuit during the journey to Lopburi to avoid taking the same route on the way back. The province is well served by highway 1. To go on the circuit, take highway 1 and turn right into highway 2 in Saraburi. Keep going straight on highway 2 until you reach Muak Lek where you need to turn left into road 2089 that leads to Wang Muang, home to fields of sunflowers. Use road 3017 for the drive to Pasak Cholasith Dam and to Lopburiy city for a tour of King Narai Palace and other historical buildings. From Lopburi, take road 3196 and 347 respectively to get to Ayutthaya via road 32 that leads to Bangkok.

WHERE TO STAY

Pasak Hillside Resort

Chai Badan district

Tel: (036) 462 428, (084) 099 6448

www.PasakHillside.com

Price range: Bt2,000-Bt2,500

Lop Buri Residence

Muang district

Tel: (036) 613 410-2

www.LopburiResidence.com

Price range: Bt600-Bt1,200

Thepthanee Hotel

Inside Ratchabhat Institute Thepsatree

Tel: (036) 411 982, (036) 411 029

Price: Bt400

Pattaraprapa Resort

Near Pasak Cholasith Dam

Tel: (036) 494 244, (036) 451277

Price Range: Bt800-Bt4,500

Narai Hill Golf Resort and Country Club

Muang district

Tel: (036) 426 545-6

www.NaraiHillGolf.com

Price range: Bt2,500-Bt3,500

Somapa Pasak Resort

Phattana Nikhom district

Tel: (081) 611 0608, (02) 734 8343

Prince range: Bt350-Bt750

WHERE TO EAT

Kin Sen

Muang district

Call (080) 123 4463

Chao Khuen

Road 3017, Phattana Nikhom district

Tel: (036) 494 030, (081) 947 2756

Nan Nam Pasak

Phattana Nikhom district

Tel: (036) 494 142

Krua Baan Khuen

Phattana Nikhom

Tel: (036) 494 008

Suan Aharn Than Tawan

Muang district

Tel: (036) 615 399, (081) 859 3849

White House Garden

Phraya Kamjad Road, Muang district

Tel: (036) 413 085, (081) 832 8510

Kaew Chao Chom

Naresuan Road, Muang district

Tel: (036) 627 899, (081) 930 0658

Blooms days

Lop Buri beckons with its sunflower harvest for the year

The Nation

The endless yellow fields of sunflowers set against the clear blue sky are the best introduction at this time of the year to the central province of Lop Buri.

This year, the province has announced a list of places where the sunflowers are expected to bloom one after another, along with many other outdoor activities for weekend visitors.

More than 10,000 rai are under flower cultivation each year, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand office in Lop Buri, but the golden flowers bloom in different places at different times.

The first, if early, place where the flowers bloom, or have already bloomed, is Chong Sarika subdistrict. The flowers here tend to mature by November 15 and the best places to view them, even now, are between Sois 16 and 17 off the provincial highway heading from Lop Buri town to Phanattha Nikhom district.

The second burst of yellow is around the Sab Lek reservoir in Lop Buri town, usually until November 27.

The reservoir is an ideal place for camping, mountainbike riding, rock climbing, boating and hiking if you are the sort who has a short attention span and cannot stare at flowers for too long.

The last bout of blooming, also said to be the best, takes place at Chin Lae mountain, along with the Sunflower Blooming Festival between December 2 and 13.

Visitors can here climb up to a higher viewing place to get an eyeful of the large yellow fields of flower against the backdrop of the Chin Lae mountain.

If you want to go higher still, the local Paraguilding Club offers rides that should have you seeing yellow for a few days.

Weekend warriors could also drop in at the A03 Army Camp, a short ride from Chin Lae mountain. The goodspirited officers there lead you into the jungle for shooting, canoeing, cliff climbing and rappelling. A course on jungle survival, which includes taming the king cobra, is also on offer.

Lob Buri is 153 kilometres by road from Bangkok and many city-dwellers tend to wrap their sunflower trip with a short detour to Pasak Chonlasit Dam in Phanattha Nikhom.

If you are intent on saving fuel, rail travel is the best alternative.

The State Railway of Thailand, (02) 220 4567 extension 5217, offers a day trip from Bangkok to Lop Buri. Admission is Bt350 per person, and includes lunch, dinner and refreshment.

Into the distant past

The cheery sunflowers aren’t the only thing to see in Lop Buri – try the time tunnel at Pong Manao

Thomtong Tongnok

The Nation

Lop Buri, let’s see … Sunflowers? Gorgeous! Saw them last year. Monkey buffet? Yes, hilarious, been a couple of times now. How about digging up something amazing that’s been buried in the ground for thousands of years?

Now that sounds different.

Culture buffs will get a kick out of playing small-time archaeologist at a dig at the village of Pong Manao, 45 kilometres east of the dazzling sunflower fields of Phattana Nikhom district.

It might not be the Holy Grail that’s up for grabs, but there are some pretty cool human skeletal remains, stone flasks, pots and other vessels emerging from an ancient graveyard.

We arrived at the prehistoric site on a recent afternoon to be greeted by a young student guide.

“Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Kunpirom Yungsup – I’m your guide for today,” she began, as if reporting in front of her class. “Welcome to the archaeological site of Pong Manao. If you have any questions, please ask me and I’ll do my best.”

Pong Manao was discovered by treasure hunters in 2000. The local people soon reported them to the police, and the archaeological site was made safe for a careful, sanctioned dig.

In October that year, with the help of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, archaeology students from Silpakorn University unearthed a section of the site.

Kunpirom led us to the side of a deep, square pit in which the skeletons on several men were visible. It was quite a shock – cultural and otherwise.

Our guide must have spotted the astonishment on my face.

“Many, many human skeletons have been found in this area,” she said, “and it’s believed that many more remain unearthed.”

Findings thus far suggest Pong Manao was a settlement 3,000 years ago, occupied over the course of three distinct periods. People were first here in the late Bronze Age, circa 600 BC, then in the Iron Age from 500 BC to AD 570, and finally the early Dvaravati period, between the sixth and eighth centuries.

Human bones have been found of both sexes and all ages, along with artefacts including fragments of bracelets, stone adzes, earrings, grinding stones, whetstones and disks made of limestone, sandstone and basalt.

There are plenty of outdoor excavations where visitors can delve into the fascinating details. About 20 rai have been scoured so far, and a local conservation club, with academic support from Silpakorn and the tourism authority, have established a museum at Wat Pong Manao.

There, a large collection of artefacts – jewellery, beads, terracotta pieces and tools – are on display. It’s no Smithsonian, but this little community museum runs on heart. What the locals can’t afford, they make up for with spirit.

“I want it to be a centre of community knowledge that everyone can visit anytime,” said Somsuan Buranapong, head of the archaeological site and the natural-resources preservation club.

Planet of the apes

Set down in Lop Buri and you’ll find that the monkey is king

Steve Rhodes

Special to the Nation

It has been a long, hard journey filled with fitful slumbers and wild dreams, and when I finally stagger off the bus at the Lop Buri bus terminal, I can’t help feeling that I must still be dreaming, and that I have somehow wound up as an extra in a “Planet of the Apes” movie.

Monkeys are everywhere, swarming along power lines and periodically leaping down and helping themselves to some choice morsel from a noodle vendor’s cart before fleeing back to the safety of their lofty perches, just out of range of the enraged vendor’s slingshot.

I make my way across the street in search of a bowl of fortifying noodles and discover Nirundorn Luengsak-sri, an earnest young man of extraordinary talent and ability, who has transformed the humble thong sandal into an art form with some deft strokes of a sharp knife and a vivid imagination. His designs were originally inspired by the monkeys but he has since branched out into more ambitious and lavish models.

Prices range from about Bt200 upwards, depending on the complexity of the patterns. Being something of a thong buff, I promptly snap up several pairs.

Nirundorn tells me an interesting story.

“Monkeys run this place,” he says. He goes on to explain how the human population have even erected a temple in the middle of the town to accommodate the thousands of simians who populate the place.

The temple was built 800 years ago and has become the scene of an interesting annual event known as the Monkey Banquet.

Tradition demands that when you visit the temple and pray to the monkey god for help or advice, and actually get the help that you ask for, you must repay the monkeys with an offering of food. A local hotel owner who wanted to improve his business got wind of this and dropped by the temple to seek guidance.

Business boomed and he was so grateful that he now stages a massive feast at the temple every year where the monkeys gorge themselves on all manner of delicacies while the newspapers and television networks have a field day covering the event.

Nirundorn has asked the monkeys for help with his thong carving business and it is also doing very well. He suggests that I should pop round and have a look at the temple and then proceed on to the recently completed monkey hospital at the local zoo, which has been set up by the Wild Animal Rescue Foundation of Thailand to treat ageing monkeys who, not as agile as they used to be, have been involved in road accidents.

The hospital has four staff made up of two vets and a couple of wranglers who help subdue larger apes while they are having minor illnesses treated without anaesthetics.

Then there’s Colonel Virat Phupeangjai, once a director of the zoo. He retired four years ago and is now secretary of the Lop Buri branch of the Wild Animal Rescue Foundation.

Voluntary work at the hospital keeps him pretty busy but what spare time he has is devoted to writing. Recently he completed a book called “Mike”, a hilarious account of the life and times of one of the zoo’s more colourful characters, an orang-utan who was being smuggled out of Indonesia but was intercepted at Bangkok airport and sent to Lop Buri Zoo.

His subsequent adventures are chronicled in the colonel’s book which is lavishly illustrated and well worth a read. It’s available at the hospital for Bt95 and proceeds from the sale go towards buying much-needed equipment for the hospital, where visitors to the zoo are welcome to drop in.

In addition to Colonel Virat’s book, there is an interesting range of souvenirs, the sale of which also goes towards equipping the hospital.

All in all visiting this rather obscure little town was an eye-opening experience. Without the monkeys, Lop Buri would be just another provincial town in Thailand. The monkeys have put it on the map and attracted tourists who would otherwise have no reason to go there, thus greatly benefiting the town’s human population.

More information about the hospital can be gleaned from the Wild Animal Rescue Foundation website, www.warthai.org