My Thailand (iPhone) Blog by Richard Barrow

Nong Grace keeps asking me to take her on one of my day trips. Most of the time I don’t need the extra hassle of dragging a 6 year old kid around. Doing day trips is not always fun and easy. It is sometimes hard work looking for new and interesting tourist destinations. However, I gave in and decided to take her to a place that I first discovered last year.

There are quite a few places around Bangkok where you can go and see monkeys in the wild. One of the best is in the small community of Khlong Khon along the coastline in Samut Songkhram. This area is starting to be discovered by Thai tourists but not so many independent foreign tourists yet. They have quite a few homestay operations here and of course the main attraction are the monkeys.

We drove to Wat Khlong Khon where we managed to find a local fisherman who was willing to take us out in his boat. He said he only wanted 4-500 baht which wasn’t too bad. If you don’t have a car, you can come here by songtaew from Samut Songkhram City. We had bought bananas in advanced before we left home. But I guess you could also buy in Samut Songkhram.

We visited a number of different spots where the monkeys came out to see us. First one or two monkeys, then quickly dozens. Some were a bit timid and stayed on the shoreline. Others swam out to greet us on the boat. One even jumped down onto the boat from an overhanging branch that we were passing under. Luckily they weren’t really aggressive. But be careful of bags!

They certainly loved the bananas. We tried to throw some as far as we could to the younger ones who stayed on the bank. It looked like the ones getting most of the bananas were the dominant males. We had four big bunches of bananas but maybe we should have brought more! We got through them quite quickly.

Nong Grace really enjoyed herself feeding the monkeys and taking pictures and video. I will link to some of her pictures later. I have already uploaded a video about the swimming monkeys. Click here to read my report on my visit to this place last year and instructions on how to find the place. Really worth the effort.

- Posted from my iPhone