L et’s Go,
HOT MAGAZINE RECOMMEND
Lopburi
W
ith a population of about 20,000 inhabitants, Lopburi is a quiet town located in central Thailand, only a two hour drive from Bangkok. While it is small, it’s a good place to monkey around—no, you heard me, right. The old town is famous for its monkeys, especially the Monkey Temple where they run amok. You’ll find them everywhere: napping on Buddha statues in ruined temples, watching you from rooftops and holding up traffic while they cross the streets in mobs. The old town is
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HOT Magazine
one of Thailand’s oldest occupied cities and if you look past those cheeky little monkeys, you’ll find some amazing things to do in Lopburi. Set in the province’s far southern reaches, Lopburi town is closely related to other ancient cities in the Chao Phraya River basin, such as Singburi, Ang Thong, Suphanburi and Ayutthaya. Defined by flowing waterways and fertile paddies, this general area was a cradle of Mon/Khmer and later Siamese/Thai civilizations stretching back well over a thousand years. Once called Lavo (or sometimes Luovo or
Lavapura), the name is supposedly an allusion to the ancient name of Lahore in modern Pakistan. Supposedly, the settlers of Lopburi were originally from that region. Archaeological evidence suggests that the area has been settled since Neolithic time. When the Khmer Empire absorbed the kingdom in the tenth century, it gave birth to the most ancient structures in the city such as Prang Sam Yod (the aforementioned Monkey Temple) and Prang Kaek. Dating back to the thirteenth century, the Monkey Temple is the most famous attraction in Lopburi. It’s also totally
