It took a while to get to by bus, but when we arrived at the bus stop, we didn't see any monkeys. So we decided to pull the bananas out then so that when we did see the monkeys, they wouldn't think we had more food hidden in the bag. Lo and behold, not a minute passed from the time the bananas were out that monkeys started pouring in from who the heck knows where! We were very quickly surrounded by about 15 monkeys all scrambling for the bananas that Amy was holding. Amy, surprised a bit, had the bananas ripped from her hands before she even knew what was going on! But once the monkeys were there, they didn't leave. They just chilled with us. They were sitting on the benches and got pretty close. None of us were brave enough to touch them, but we took tons of pictures.
After a little while, the monkeys started fighting! Like full on yelling and biting and scratching! It was kind of freaky, I think they were fighting over food or water or something. They seemed to be in the same family, but we could tell who wasn't a mama and who were the boys, and the mamas were definitely always trying to protect their babies from the males. It was kind of scary, but we didn't know what to do. There were these locals who had this little shop that kept feeding them a bunch of food, but also getting in to break up the fights. It was interesting. We spent a ton of time there just watching the monkeys, and eventually picking up little seeds and flowers and things and feeding them to the monkeys! They would just come and take them out of your hand! It was indeed pretty cute. This old man came by with a bunch of nuts and things and he was like the monkey whisperer. He would give them to the monkeys he wanted to give them to, and then puff his chest and stomp his foot and scare the ones he didn't and then laugh and sit down with them. It was so funny!
After a long while, we finally got on a bus and headed to the Monastery of 10,000 Buddhas. There are actually 10,000 Buddha statues there! We had heard that they led the trail leading up to the monastery, since it was on top of this big hill, but when we climbed up it, we only counted like 6 on the way up! But once we got up there, there were definitely a lot more Buddhas! The temple itself housed sooooo many that it wouldn't surprise me if there were 10,000 inside that itself! They were all very small, but they lined all the walls of this very tall building! They had a bunch of free books about Buddhism and whatnot, so we took them to learn a little bit! We went down a different way than coming up and discovered we definitely took the wrong way up. There were indeed countless Buddhas lining the trail and the stair leading up! It was a very cool place!
Mid to late afternoon we head over to a place called Aberdeen Pier, although there really was not much to see! We walked along the river hoping to catch a glimpse of this very cool, gigantic river restaurant floating in the middle of the river, but we never got to get close enough to it to get any good pictures! We did discover this very big cemetery that was creepy. But that was it!
