Right smack in the middle of a week full of midterm exams came Teacher's Day which is celebrated here as it rightfully should be with no work for the teachers and right in the middle of the week on a Wednesday too and since none of us were doing any work on account of midterms anyways it was decided that it would be a good day to drag our poor little motorbikes on a backroads day trip to a near-by province. Tara and I had been made aware on an occasion or two of the city of Lop Buri (lope - burr - ee), or Lopburi if you prefer, which has an interesting combination of sites including some nice and interesting shaped mountains and also some ancient ruins from the Ayutthaya Period, the Khmer Empire and even some influence from the earlier Dvaravati period and that these ruins and even parts of the city had been taken over by Macaque monkeys who had driven away human habitation for several blocks but most importantly the vast sea of bright yellow sunflowers that stretched for miles and miles through the countryside and so it was agreed that this would be our destination