Monkeys!

Saturday I was remembering the first time I came to visit my site 2 months or so ago, and remembered these small but really steep cliffed out mountains that I saw on the way in. So I decided to go ride my bike to check them out more, which turned out to be an awesome decision.

After discovering that a lot of the cliffs I had seen were up against a quarry that was being mined for gravel, I continued to ride my bike around the little range of mountains. I started to see little caves into the rock.

Around the next corner I came to a bunch of old abandoned temple buildings, a small shop, lots of Bhudda statues, caves, and monkeys everywhere. I think these are called gibbons. Anyway, I went into the shop and talked to the lady running it, who told my I should "kun khao" or climb up the mountain. She offered to watch my bike for me, so off I went, slowly walking past the monkeys to the set of stairs ascending the mountain.




The monkeys mostly got out of my way, walking up the concrete path in front of me as I took pictures of them and the scenery. This is probably one of the coolest places I have ever been. There were huge Bhudda statues everywhere, caves heading back into the mountain that I decided best not to explore alone, and crazy buildings and pathways built into the side of the rocks.

The scenery was also epic. In between this Bhudda and the rock, you can see Khao Kitchakut, 1500 meters high, the biggest mountain in Chanthaburi. In the other direction the horizon was the ocean.
This bridge went from one little peak on the side of the mountain over to the main portion. There were lots of monkeys on it, probably took me about 15 minutes to get across because one of the monkeys did not want to move. Eventually he went over to the side and let me past.









This is looking up to the north. The hills you can see to the left is Khao Wong, which are cliffed out and filled with caves on the other side. My house is about 15 km back behind them.



Anyways, things are still good in Thailand, meeting lots of people, my Thai keeps getting better, and I may be doing a mountain bike race this weekend.