A Day Trip from Bangkok (Part 2) - Lopburi Sunflower Fields & Monkey Temple
10:32 AMBack to where we left off! If you haven't read the first part of the Bangkok travel where we came from Ayutthaya to Lopburi, you can check the post out here.
The train ride took about an hour and a half from Ayutthaya to Lopburi.
There's a number of sights to see at Lopburi, but our top priorities were the Monkey Temple and the Sunflower fields. All of which we had about three hours to cover!
We had no idea how we were going to get to both of these places since we don't know of any rentals or taxis around the area, but we were lucky. The owner of the street stall where we had our lunch (right opposite Lopburi station) at was really helpful.
We told him of our plans and he said he could help us get a driver (probably a relative or friend of his) as the Sunflower field was about 30km away. Definitely not a place you wanna go by bike or foot. And so, he got us a driver to take us to the sunflower field and the monkey temple at 700 baht (SGD$14 per person).
I read on some site that you could take a public bus to the fields at only 30 baht or so, but the journey is about two hours back and forth. Because we wanted to catch the last train back to Bangkok at 6PM, we took the driver offer. Yay to a comfortable ride!!
Lopburi Sunflower Fields
The fields took my breath away. Yeap, first time in a sunflower field, or any floral fields in fact. Finally getting to tick this off my list!
The Lopburi sunflower fields comes in full bloom in Nov - Jan, so we were really lucky that our trip was this timely! If you're travelling this coming Dec/Jan, you should pay the fields a visit too. The locals who owned the area are also really friendly and courteous, although they may be a language barrier if you can't speak or understand Thai.
Even so, they offered us some sunflower seeds while we were traipsing in their fields!
Han being so fixated on the seeds hahaha.
Because I already spent 350 baht to get here, I should take myself in the fields in all sorts of angles right?? Thank you Han for capturing such beautiful shots!! From Melbourne to Bangkok, he knows just what kind of shots I love hehe.
Made the sunflower boy wear my hat. He really looks like a farmer here...
Just beside the fields, some locals are also selling other food items like drinks, honey, baked nuts and so on.
Lopburi Monkey Temple
Our final stop was the Lopburi Monkey Temple, which wasn't located too far away from Ayutthaya station. I think Han enjoyed the Monkey Temple the most, because he finally got to reconcile with his own kind. :') HAHA I kid.The monkeys were really mischievous, albeit adorable and we had a lot of of fun just playing around while photographing them in their habitat. Bring a change of clothes if you plan to play with them cause you could get dirty.
Somewhere inbetween, Han found a buddy! This little monkey had lots of fun just sitting on his shoulder while rummaging for food in his hair. A few other monkeys also hopped onto him later.
"Call me the Monkey whisperer" lolol.
I also had a few small monkeys climb on me while swinging on my hair... But I just can't do it the way Han does - with a smile and all LOL.
Generally, the monkeys are just playful and not harmful at all, so just keep a watch out on your personal belongings to make sure they don't grab and run away with any of your loose items. There's also kind of a temple caretaker around who will help to warn the monkeys not to climb on the visitors, if you're scared of them.
And then the perfect golden hour light came around just in time for me to capture a few shots before we left Lopburi for good! Our journey back to Bangkok took us about three hours, so we still had some time to visit a night market before we called it a day.
Definitely an exhausting, albeit rewarding day trip out of Bangkok. It's not something I would usually think to do, especially since shopping and eating alone can take up all of my days in the land of smiles but this was a good kind of different. Getting lost, finding our way, and seeing these beautiful sights became the highlight of our trip. And of course all the street food we had.
It was kind of rushed, but I think that any more time spent on either of the places may end up being a bit boring. A day trip without a night's stay was just perfect for us. But there are travellers who take this route whilst on the road from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. That's quite a feat itself.
In the next post, I'll touch on the specific costs of our travel and how we got around from Bangkok to Ayutthaya and Lopburi with the railway! Hopefully the photos from both posts have already convinced you that these two destinations are worth the trip.
Also, I brought my GoPro with me to Bangkok, so I'll definitely be working on a video for it! Now that school's out, I have so many plans to get this video and my previous Melbourne/Redang video done!! Till then x.
Check out my other travel posts:
▶ A Day Trip from Bangkok (Part 1) - Ayutthaya Temples
▶ A Day Trip from Bangkok (Part 2) - Lopburi Sunflower Fields and Monkey Temple
▶ A Day Trip from Bangkok (Part 3) - Getting to Ayutthaya and Lopburi
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