Temple Monkeys: The Devil’s Work

To anyone with an evil sense of humour, hanging out at a temple with monkeys is a guaranteed source of entertainment.

Gasp as a tourist buys bananas, hands one in the direction of a baby monkey, and is seamlessly mugged by three or four big males.

Bite back advice as a mother thinks it could possibly be a good idea to equip a small child with food for the β€œnice monkeys” and coaxes her already terrified infant to β€œfeed the babies”.

Like the big guys are going to let that happen, right?

Giggle as a posed photo moves from smiles to nervous laughter to hysterical laughter to plain old-fashioned hysteria…

The Horror! The Horror!


Feeding a monkey is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most people.

And with good reason.

They mug. They rob. They steal food, drink and shiny things.

They can also scratch, bite and pass on ailments ranging from ticks to, more catastrophically, rabies.

Monkeys? They’re evil. Pure, pure evil.

Monkeys under the religious protection of a temple? They’re worse.

Some Treasured Memories


We’ve had some, erm, interesting encounters with temple monkeys over the years. Pretty much Z’s only memory of our trip to Sri Lanka when he was three is of the temple monkey which unzipped our bag, helped itself to his sweets and then sat in a tree, staring at him as he screamed in frustration while she ate them one by one.

Then hopped from tree to tree as he chased, on his small round legs, howling futilely, at ground level. Entering, in fact, stage 2 of the monkey assault reaction: “Futile fist-shaking and rage”.

She had a baby with her. But, by and large, monkey mamas don’t share.

Me? My dominant memory of our ascent of Sigiriya, also in Sri Lanka, a rock that ranks as one of the world’s wonders and is, in some ways, more impressive than Uluru, is the adolescent male monkey that commenced intercourse with our companion’s ear.

She thought it was a finger at first…

Let’s Talk Species


The culprit was, I think, a grey macaque.

They’re the nice monkeys, relatively speaking.

Black macaques? They’re worse. Feed those suckers and they can become sufficiently over-familiar to attempt full-scale vaginal intercourse. (And, no, before you ask, this hasn’t happened to me.)

Though, when you look at their butts, it’s easy to see that they’re, erm, highly sexed.

A black macaque in Sulawesi, Indonesia, with his pink buttock padding displayed.

Met in the wild, it’s wise to avoid eye contact. Contrary to what you might have read or seen in The Jungle Book they take it as a challenge.

(This, incidentally, has happened to me. Big thanks to our guide, who, before our eyes, transformed himself from shortish Bugis guy into virtually the Incredible Hulk, just as Z was beginning to get antsy.)

They’re also substantially bigger than grey macaques. Which have an impressive set of dentition themselves.

Monkey Forest = Better Than You’d Think


Z by the river that flows through Monkey Forest, Ubud. A charming jungle vista.

All that said, I have a soft spot for Monkey Forest in Ubud, Bali. It’s in the centre of town, set around a forested gorge, with some utterly charming ponds, a pretty stream, strangling figs draping elegant tendrils and some impressively mossy temples and statues.

And, yes, several hundred grey macaques. Some of them ickle cute babies.

And babies, whatever one’s feelings about monkeys in general, still make the heart melt.

baby monkeys looking for something, probably food, in monkey forest, ubud, bali

Though perhaps not enough to consider keeping one as a pet, an activity apparently popular in Malta, where they favour marmosets. With diapers.

The nice thing about Monkey Forest? It’s firmly on the tourist bus route, meaning there’s always some other sucker around to feed the monkeys.

Although the attendants who help with the feeding process – AKA control the evil critters — take some of the fun out of it for the observer.

Baboons = Evil


Now, I once saw a baboon, on the southernmost tip of South Africa, snatch a video camera and race down a cliff with it.

He moved like lightning.

And, while the owner was still in the first stages of primate-mugging shock – β€œDid that just happen? Should I wave my fist at it?” and building to the second stage β€œLet me run after it! No, damn! It’s faster than me!” the ape got bored and, well, dropped the camcorder.

Into, well, coulda been the Indian Ocean. Coulda been the Atlantic. Could just have been some rocks…

Like I said, it was the southernmost tip of Africa.

Video cameras, I kind of get. They’re shiny. Monkeys like that sh*t.

But glasses? Spectacles?

WTF?!

Primates + Cliffs = Trouble


My parents have been visiting us here in Bali the last couple of weeks. And we figured Ulu Watu, a pretty, if heavily-touristed temple set on the cliffs of the southernmost tip of Bali, which gives its name to a frankly terrifying surf break, would be a nice outing to do ahead of their flight out.

On arrival, signs request that you remove and conceal glasses, hats and belts, since the monkeys like to steal them.

Neither of my parents can see more than about 5 metres without their glasses. Which, given we’d come for the view, was a bit of a bummer, really.

meru multi-roofed temple on the cliffs of ulu watu, south bali.

Whatevs. I should have known better.

Particularly once the first previously-spectacled Korean tourist started howling in shock.

But I didn’t.

So my ma and I figure that, given her glasses are attached to a string around her neck, she might as well put them on to look at that view.

Well…

Monkeys = Ninjas


Those suckers move like absolute lightning. Z saw the big male making its move, and entered stage zero of the monkey assault thought process, the β€œUh-oh! It’s going to do something bad, something very bad…” stage.

By the time his mouth opened, the monkey had ripped the spectacles off granny’s face, off the string around her neck, and retreated to the clifftop wall.

Where he squatted with that β€œYeah, buddy? Wanna make something of it?” facial and body language which makes primate thieves of all species so bloody annoying.

I apologise for the absence of photos. But I figured it would be more diplomatic to make helpful gestures than whip out the camera, plus for all I knew one of the bastards would have snatched that too.

Monkey Helpers = Expensive


Enter the monkey attendant. He whips out a piece of banana. The monkey clenches it in one paw, clings to the glasses with the other, gestures in the universal thug language of β€œwhat else you got?”

Attendant pulls out a fruit in a plastic bag.

Monkey grabs this, clings to glasses, gestures for seconds.

He produces his final card. An egg.

The monkey cannot fit the egg, the banana, the plastic-wrapped fruit and the glasses into his two front paws.

He thinks for a nano-second, drops the glasses. Then realises his mistake, and goes back for the specs.

The attendant makes a punching gesture, far more authoritative than any an amateur could manage. The glasses are retrieved.

That will be, says the attendant, 50,000 rupiah for the monkey food.

β€œBugger!” says my mother. β€œI was beginning to like this country and now I hate it all over again.”

Have you got a monkey story you’d like to share? Or do you like the creatures? What animals represent evil to you? Let’s have a heated debate!

33 Responses

  1. MaryAnne says:

    Am very glad to know I’m not the only person out there not wholly enthusiastic about monkeys. Tomorrow morning, bright and early before going to work (first day back at uni for semester 2), I get to travel halfway across Shanghai to get my final rabies jab after that monkey at the wat bit me in Phnom Penh two weeks ago.

    I was also mugged by a huge monkey in Ubud in the monkey forest a few years ago– and I didn’t even have peanuts or bananas like the other tourists there (maybe that was why he lunged at my leg with claws bared?)

    I’m not even going to start talking about the baboons in Cape Town or the thieving simians on Elephanta Island off Mumbai!

    *shudder*

    • Theodora says:

      Christ! That’s the second person I’ve heard of who’s been bitten by a monkey recently…Did you have the pre-vaccination? Or did you have to have the full course? They are supposed to be hideous shots, really painful. Is it as bad as they say it is?

  2. annette baesel says:

    I too had to “pay the piper” at Ulu Watu when the cheeky little bugger jumped on my shoulder and whipped off my glasses. (and I was watching for them too). I’m beginning to think the temple attendants are training them, so we have to give pay for their help. πŸ™‚ It was pretty funny to watch my husband chase the little b*st*rd around the temple (I was, frankly, blind as a bat). But only in retrospect. I had slight damage to the glasses…using twitter I sent out an SOS to my Balinese Twitter friends and got 3 recommendations for a glass frame store (all the same store) which turned out to be in walking distance of our hotel. So just a couple hours later…my glasses were fixed. (i admit to being very glad knowing i also had a spare pair of glasses back in my suitcase). The monkeys of the Ubud Monkey Forest by comparison were very well behaved…thankfully…I wasn’t looking forward to chasing another primate around a forest.

    • Theodora says:

      We figured it probably happened by accident once. After which the monkeys all learnt that they got food, and the attendants all learnt they could make money out of it, and it became kind of self-fulfilling…

      My ma’s glasses, like yours, were only mildly damaged. But it does spoil the vibe at Ulu Watu just a little…

  3. Noooo. I cannot believe this. Surely it’s you, Theodora, that brings out the worst in the whole species?

  4. Megan says:

    I have not had quite such traumatic experiences as you or Mary Anne (yikes–those rabies shots are expensive!), but a monkey chased after me in Thailand and stole my crackers. Not a big deal, but I was seriously freaked out and have looked at monkeys in a different light ever since.

    Oh, and I won’t even go into the orangutans at the zoo in Washington, D.C. That’s an NC-17 comment. Seriously. Disturbing.

    • Theodora says:

      Now, I was kind of awed by orangutans, despite the fact that they routinely savage keepers who get too close… But I’m really curious as to what they do in Washington DC…

  5. I’ve despised monkeys ever since being attacked by one of the little bastards in Lopburi, Thailand.

    One morning I was strolling down the street when a monkey knocked me down from behind, hard. What a shock. I thought I’d been hit by a truck. Then the nasty little villain stole my snack while hundreds of his filthy cohorts jeered.

    Jerks.

    God, MaryAnne. Sorry to hear you got bitten.

    • maryanne says:

      Thanks, Renee. I’m finally done with all my shots now- I’ve had at least 15 in the past 2 weeks and my poor bank account feels more traumatized than I do! At least I’m not rabid now πŸ™‚

    • Theodora says:

      Crikey. They do pack a lot of punch for their size, don’t they? For the record, a pack of baboons can chase down and kill a full-grown cheetah…

  6. Kristy says:

    Have to say, these stories are funny, when read in the safe confines of an office, but in real life those suckers can get scary. We have a big troop that lives near our house in Singapore. For the most part, they are pretty cool. But leave it to some stupid person to carry a bag of food down towards the canal(where the monkeys live) swing the bag around, taunt the monkeys with some bread and then….run away in abject terror beating the monkeys back with an umbrella. Not that he didn’t deserve it…

    • Theodora says:

      I am constantly amazed when people mess with them… Though at least, I guess, unlike Cambodia and Bali, Singapore is rabies-free?

  7. baboons freak me out — not many animals I dislike and they are one of them

  8. Ahh those adorable little critters … not. I still stand by my belief that there’s a good reason the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz chose monkey’s to be her evil minions. The addition of wings didn’t make them evil, it was already there.

  9. Justin says:

    Oh yeah, monkeys are no joke. Don’t take out any food that you don’t intend to throw and run. I’ve seen monkeys in India, Indonesia, Malaysia & several other places and they were all quite aggressive. You put quite a comical spin on it πŸ™‚

  10. Odysseus says:

    Yes! This is the second story I’ve read that agrees with me: Monkeys are evil! I took some monkey photos in India and put them on my Facebook page with captions like “Mean Monkeys” or “Monkey Who Later Attacked a Lady” but all my friends just write comments about how cute they are.

    • Theodora says:

      So glad to find another monkey hater. Though you’ve got to admit, they are cute too!

  11. LOL! i remember the monkeys in japan – they were almost worse than the deer (who unzipped my purse, went in, and started eating). great article!

  12. The belly shot of the monkey is hilarious, but his butt further below KILLS ME. I’ve not spent much time in Asia, so I haven’t had too many cheeky monkey run-ins (other than the one who stole my lunch in South Africa!). Scott, on the other hand, met the famous baboons of Gibraltar and fed them beer and peanuts =)

    • Theodora says:

      I’ve never been to Gibraltar. As a Brit, I’d love to. I hear British society in Gibraltar is like the 1950s, let alone the 1960s, never happened… Though they do have monkeys in Latin America, I’ve never had a problem with them. We once fed a monkey in Kenya, though. *Big* mistake.

  13. We saw this whole glasses-stealing thing at this exact temple. It’s unreal.

    We also saw some Asian tourists giggling and laughing while feeding the animals in the Monkey Forest. One 20something girl was letting them crawl all over here, and one did a wee. She just kept on giggling…

    • Theodora says:

      I think I would have laughed too if a monkey weed on me. I mean, what else can you do?! Cry?! It is so surreal the trick with the glasses, though apparently they are ninjas with belts too, something I would *love* to see.

  14. jalakeli says:

    They are undoubtedly evil! Of my many run-ins the ‘best’ was in India where, as I stood outside a friend’s apartment, I heard a noise above and glanced up to see a monkey staring down from the roof. I didn’t think much of it until something starting raining down on us. The damned thing shat right on our heads.
    It aimed (& fired)! Bastard.

    • Theodora says:

      I am 100% in agreement with you that it aimed, fired and enjoyed the results. They have an evil sense of humour, bastard monkeys. Clearly related to us humans…

  15. Steve says:

    Monkey’s are not evil, they are very sweet and can be very helpful to man. I have one and he is far from evil. Human on the other hand can be very evil. This person who post this is the evil one.