Sometimes, when you travel, you never know what will happen.
Thus we traveled to Kosamphi Forest Park, a decades-old field of trees with thousands of monkeys around. It’s located on 50 acres of shady tree-filled park along the Chi river, and was first established in October of 1976.
The eastern Thailand park claims several species of macaques, including the stump-tailed macaque (Macaca arctoides), the pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina), the Assamese macaque (Macaca assammensis), the Crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis), and the Rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta). In reality it’s a bit difficult to tell them apart — or even keep count! — of them while they’re all moving.
After entering the park, pick up a bag of a couple dozen mini-bananas for a nominal fee from one of the sellers and head in — it’s the only place to pick up any kind of food, so aim for one bag per person.
Plenty of statues and real-live monkeys combine — although we tried, we didn’t see any monkeys climbing other monkeys (and believe me, we tried to get pictures of that!).
Smiles like these were actually a sign of aggression, and usually followed by a hiss…
These monkeys must be getting busy whenever the humans aren’t around! Plenty of babies around — almost all were latched onto their mother’s teat or otherwise hanging on for dear life as their mothers ambled about.
Some seemed happy enough to sit in trees — especially after we ran out of bananas. We ended up going back to get more and keep the monkeys coming around.
Move about the park via the paved road — there’s plenty of room to park your car or motorbike, but keep an eye on it! Like the rest of the park, there’s a very good chance the monkeys will climb all over your vehicle.
More than a few monkeys were a bit put off by the large lens / camera being pointed their way. Not sure if they just didn’t want to see their reflection or something else.
She seemed a bit busy… but was more than happy to pose for us.
At this point, I decided to switch to video and my trusty GoPro. Well, the camera’s trusty enough — I’m still learning how to get good videos, how to edit them into interesting-to-watch narratives, and how to do it in a fashion that won’t take forever to do… One great thing about the GoPro is that it’s a great wide-angle, and it’s awesome at getting the sort of shots you wouldn’t get with a larger camera… I had it attached to a extendable pole, then set it down to see what would happen:
The classic ‘put-the-banana-in-front-of-the-camera-and-see-what-happens’ trick. The result? The monkey opted to carefully reach down to the bench, picked up the banana, and scurried off. We tried getting closer with some more videos, but the results were meh at best.
Eventually, I decided to just put it on a table and see what happened.
At first, nothing interesting happened. Monkeys scratching themselves doesn’t exactly make for the most enthralling videos… I walked a little further away, trying to keep an eye on it…
Until the monkey stole the camera and ran off with it!
Yep — he took it and ran up the tree with it:
After 20 minutes of throwing him bananas, he eventually dropped the pole the camera was attached to. Unfortunately, the funky monkey dropped it in a virtually inaccessible area — after 30 minutes of searching we gave up. Monkeys, you win this round…
It’s a wonderful place to take a day trip from Khon Kaen, although to be blunt there wasn’t anything else in the town or area worth seeing that we could find.
Name: Kosamphi Forest Park (AKA Kosamphi Monkey Park)
Address: Tambon Hua Khwang, Amphoe Kosum Phisai, Chang Wat Maha Sarakham 44140 (GPS: 16.254292, 103.067622)
Directions: You’ll want a motorcycle or car to reach this one. From Khon Kaen’s Central Plaza, head south down route 2. Go about 11 kilometers and begin looking to take a left onto route 208. Go about 30 kilometers on route 208 and approach the small Thai town of Chang Wat (you won’t see many signs for it, though). Pass the 7–11, then begin looking for the next four-way intersection. Take a left, then bear right — the park is about 600 meters from the left turn.
Hours: 6am-6pm
Admission: free — bags of bananas are inside for a nominal fee.
Phone: 043–343–411
Website: http://dnp.go.th
