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Hi from Lopburi!
This town northeast of Bangkok has 60,000 human residents, and 3,000 monkeys sharing the territory. The presence of the latter was so overpowering that Lopburi quickly became known as the Monkey Town.
But during the pandemic, the lack of tourists made the long-tailed macaques desperate. To find food, they started harassing the citizens. So much so that they had to seal their windows and even cage themselves from the pests.
Just look at this view I got from my room in the centrally located Lopburi City Hotel. Mind you, it is me who is behind the bars, while monkeys freely roam around the building.
Well, not all of them. To be able to continue living normally, the city decided to build special enclosures where most of these primates now reside, with only a minority still ruling the town center.
However, the enclosure is not a maximum security prison. Just a weekend ago, 200 monkeys escaped, causing such chaos that police had to barricade their station.
The solution to the problem is not to starve the macaques out. So despite the fact that feeding them initiated the entire sequence of problems in the first place, the city still hosts an annual monkey buffet, a gastro festival for these insatiable little mouths.
Local enthusiasts prepare some 500 plates decorated with fruit, vegetables, and candies. The majority of this food disappears in minutes. Monkeys stuff their mouths to the brim, with an appetite that doesn’t know tomorrow.
We may laugh at them as they push into their mouths more than they can chew. But don’t we, humans, have a similar yearly festival? Or is Black Friday something significantly more decent?
Remember, it was the police who gave the name to the event, referring to the shopping chaos that occurs in this period of big sales. When the doors of the shopping malls open, we behave like just slightly more civilized apes.
Many vendors will compete for your attention these days, trying to stimulate your appetite even for things you clearly never needed. It’s hard to find a good measure in a commercial jungle but remember Lopburi monkeys once you feel that shopping instinct prevails over logic.
Still, Black Friday is a great opportunity to buy those products and services you wanted to get hold of anyway, as you can save respectable sums of money.
To help you out with your wanderlust appetite, here are this year’s best Black Friday travel deals.
Shop smartly.
Have a not-black week!
Ivan Kralj
Pipeaway.com
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