day 12: monkeying around

well, we had such an exciting day yesterday that we figured we better stick to the main highways and make some distance back towards bangkok.  lots of driving on much busier roads but michael did great (even on the other side of the road) and we were still able to spend some quality time with hundreds of monkeys.  we had read in our travel book that there were some interesting sites in prachup khiri khan, a little city on ao manao, a bay in the gulf of thailand, so we turned off the main interstate and headed that direction around midday.  after driving around a bit we found the most interesting site for us which was a big hill in the middle of the city with a temple up at the very top.  now of course there are temples everywhere in thailand but this particular temple is guarded by a huge community of monkeys.  i mean literally there must have been hundreds of monkeys just hanging out all over this hill.  we parked our car on the street and started taking pictures of the ones all around and watching them interact, get in fights over food, and clean eachother off.  an old woman with a bike came by to sell us nuts to feed them.  they started climbing on our car and looking in the windows.  some were banging on trash cans to make themselves more impressive.  it was a little intimidating being surrounded by so many of these unpredictable little creatures and we hadnt even started up the stairs yet.  as we started to climb up the hill we were amazed at how there were just more and more monkeys hanging out in even bigger groups then below.  at one point up the stairs we werent sure if we should go any further because it would mean passing through a particularly densely populated pagoda.  we were a little uneasy about how they would react to us entering their space and we were incredibly out numbered.  we kept hesitating not wanting to disturb the masses until finally another traveller came up behind us and just booked it straight through without even a thought about disturbing them.  luckily, they didnt even care one bit so we knew we were safe and continued on.  the view from the top was nice and the temple serene but our favorite part of this stop was getting to hang out with so many monkeys and the enormous amount of pictures we took prove it.  the photo ops were amazing for us amateur artistic photographers.  we really enjoyed it even if it was a bit scary not knowing what the throngs of monkeys would do at any moment.  the rest of the day was pretty uneventful driving on thai I-5 but we did see a gigantic pineapple building on the side of the road that got michael pretty excited and made for a funny photo stop.  we did make some great miles today too and made it all the way to kanchanaburi north of bangkok.