Hello, My Name is Bingo. I Like to Climb on Things. Can I Have a Banana? Eeep Eeep.

We left Koh Chang with only one thing on our minds: monkey business.

We headed back to Bangkok via bus, and took an evening train to the town of Lopburi. We arrived in town at 10:30pm with no idea of where we were heading. After playing "directions charades" with a local shopkeeper, we arrived at our hotel, where the bars on our windows were not to keep out robbers but "a renegade gang of trouble-making monkeys" as accurately described by Lonely Planet.

The next morning we headed to their local gang turf - the temple across the road, where the gang of 200+ monkeys were out in full force. Here they enjoyed jumping on Craig while he photographed them. At one point he had three monkey babies on him. The good news is Craig is now nit-free. The bad news is he may have a monkey disease known as "bananarama fever". At the temple we fed lots of monkeys and were protected by guards with slingshots who tried to prevent further attacks.

As we explored the city we realized the monkeys were everywhere and had free roam (see the video of us crossing the street by our hotel). The locals consider them pests, but we loved them.

We really felt we were off the beaten track as we explored deeper in the city. We were always the only non-Thais around. In the evening we stumbled across a park where 50 people were doing coordinated aerobics, which is a common sight here. We also watched some young guys playing takraw - look it up on YouTube! It's like volleyball using only your head and feet to send a rattan ball over the net. The guys do aerial stunts and ninja bicycle kicks, often landing on their hands. We were thoroughly impressed.

Then we braved a 10-hour train journey north to Chang Mai, where we are now. We have been exploring some of the 300 temples in town, but it begins to feel like once you've seen five or six temples, you've seen them all.

To give you an idea of how affordable travelling is here, a few examples of our daily costs:

- Pad Thai = $1 - $2 CAD
- Bottle of beer = $1 CAD
- Pack of birth control pills = $0.50 (as seen in the pharmacy but not actually purchased - can you trust them when they are cheaper than a chocolate bar?!)
- Hotel room with hot water, private bathroom, A/C, TV = $10 CAD
- Guest house room with fan, shared bathroom = $8 CAD
- Bus ticket (4 hour journey) = $6 CAD
- Train ticket (10 hour journey + lunch) = $18 CAD

On Friday we head to the small town of Pai (population 3000), which will NOT be off the beaten track, as the transvestite/ladyboy we bought our bus ticket from assured us there are many "farangs" (white people) there.

It's all in a day in the life of Thailand!