Photos

I have not been on TrekEarth for a while because I was on vacation in Thailand.

I had a chance to attend a monkey feast festival in the province of Lopburi, Thailand. Every year on the last Sunday of November, the festival is organized by a local businessman who believes that local monkeys bring his family good fortune.

This feast was the 18th annual chinese banquet (people's food) for monkeys. Because there were so many monkeys in the town, the feast had to be laid out in two sittings: the morning was held on the ground of the Three-Summit Pagoda (Phra Prang Sam Yod) and the afternoon feast was held on the ground of San Phra Kan shrine aross the railway tracks.

Both locations are homes of troops of generally tame monkeys but will fiercely protect their territories from the more mischievous and agressive troop of market monkeys.

The food offered to the monkeys included fruits, vegetables, sunflowers, crackers, cereal, traditional Thai desserts, jello, orange juice, Pesi, coke and etc. See Banquet Table 1 and Banquet Table 2

The new addition this year was big colorful popsicles with fruits and sunflowers inside. It was extremely hot and humid so monkeys enjoyed licking on the popsicles. This photo shows what's inside of a big colorful popsicle - Popsicle 1. This photo show a sunflower inside a popsicle for monkeys - Posicle 2.

The banquet tables were prepared nearby. The staffs on duty had to be constantly on alert making sure that sneaky monkeys couldn't stealing food from the tables before the feast.

While I was taking photos of monkeys licking giant popsicles, I saw this little local boy putting on quite a show in the corner of my eye. These monkeys will bite and can get very nasty so I was very surprised. By the time I ran over to take a picture of them, the monkey snatched the whole bottle of orange juice away from him and I missed the opportunity.

While frowning, my friend bought two more bottles and he gave one to the boy and asked him to feed the other to the monkey. They (both the boy and the monkey) were very happy and I got my shots right before the monkey snatched it from his hands again.

Watch the feast here