Lopburi Monkey Buffet Festival
📍 Lopburi, Lopburi
Once a year the old town of Lopburi lays out towering pyramids of fruit, vegetables, and sweets on red tablecloths in front of an ancient Khmer shrine — a lavish banquet held entirely for the city's thousands of resident macaques.
The old town of Lopburi has long shared its streets and crumbling Khmer temples with several thousand crab-eating macaques. Once a year, on the last Sunday of November, the town says thank you in the most extravagant way imaginable: the Monkey Buffet Festival.
Why It’s Interesting
In front of the 13th-century shrine of Phra Prang Sam Yot, organisers pile up enormous, sculpted spreads — pyramids of watermelon, pineapple, durian, lettuce, eggs, and Thai sweets, dressed with red cloths and decorations — and then let the monkeys loose to demolish them. The result is gleeful chaos: macaques diving into fruit towers, stealing from each other, and clambering over delighted (and slightly nervous) onlookers. It began as a tourism idea in the late 1980s and has become one of Thailand’s most surreal annual spectacles.
Best Time to Visit
The buffet is the last Sunday of November, in the cool season. The macaques themselves rule the old town every day of the year.
Getting There
Lopburi is an easy train day-trip from Bangkok (around 3 hours); Phra Prang Sam Yot is a short walk from the station. Mon-chan took one look at a thousand monkeys and announced, firmly, “I do not like them.”
🐿️ Cinnamon was here
Field report
Once a year, Lopburi throws a banquet for its actual rulers: towers of fruit, vegetables, and sweets laid on red-clothed tables before the old Khmer shrine, and then the town's thousands of macaques descend to eat, loot, wear, and redistribute the offerings in an hour of gleeful, sanctioned chaos.
I attended in a strictly observational capacity from a power line, because macaques view a squirrel at a buffet as either competition or garnish and I declined to learn which. Watching a monkey seize an entire pineapple crown and wear it like a war helmet while three others dismantle a fruit pyramid engineering-first is the purest theater Thailand offers.
Last Sunday of November. Secure your hat, glasses, earrings, snacks, and dignity before arrival — the monkeys collect all five. The town loves its menaces. The menaces know it.
— Cinnamon 🐿️
📸 Cinnamon's camera roll
Snapshots from our very good boy on the road.
Where it is
Nearby discoveries
Wat Mahathat & the Buddha Head in the Tree
Ayutthaya River Prawns (Kung Mae Nam)
Wat Chaiwatthanaram
MOCA Bangkok (Museum of Contemporary Art)
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