The One With the Monkey

I got attacked by a monkey.  True story.  Totally happened.  I've got documentation to prove it.

Chicken Island

Two weekends ago, we did a snorkeling trip around four of the islands in Krabi.  First was Tup where the snorkeling was pretty good and where I was viciously attacked by aforementioned monkey and as such will save that story for last.  Chicken island was the second island and the snorkeling there was really cool.  We neglected to bring an underwater camera so needless to say, any photos of the fish and coral are nonexistent.  Also, we jumped right off the boat into the reef so there was no means to take pictures on the island.

Take my word for it though, the sea life was awesome.  We saw these huge huge rainbow-y fish.  So brightly colored and they seriously looked like they'd swallowed a bag of Skittles!

This is supposed to look like a chicken....I think
it looks like a giant scrotum.  You be the judge.

There were some adorable pinky-greeny fish that seemed to enjoy our presence and also loved messing with us.  They would swim alongside me as I took in the coral and they would swim directly at me!  They would be perfectly still in the water staring at me - I swear its eyes were making direct contact with mine and I'm pretty sure it smiled - and then I would move a little and it would swim like a little kamikaze at me before darting off at the last second.  Playing chicken with the fish!!

None of the coral was especially colorful, except for these really cool lettuce-looking thingers that were bright shades of purple, green and pink and when you swam up to them, they sucked themselves back into their shells.  If you floated over top of them and were still enough, they would start to poke themselves back out of the giant shells.  Those were fun to play around with.

For some reason, I felt the need to kick furiously even though floating above the coral was probably my best option.  Obviously then I smashed my feet into coral more than once and was bleeding slightly when I got back on the boat.  It left some itchy scars on odd parts of my feet, but I'm all healed now!

There were a lot of places while we were swimming where I started to get a little freaked out because there was no place to stand should I feel the need to stand up.  The sea floor was totally blanketed with coral.  When I did manage to find a clear patch of sand to stand up, I got bamboozled in the leg by a fish!  It was like the fish said, "No you may not stand in this area thankyouverymuch I will headbutt you."  Kind of hilarious.


The guides kept telling us to watch out for the sea urchins, and man were they scary looking!  I found this picture online and basically, this is exactly what they looked like.  The spikey things were like eight inches long and sometimes I felt like I didn't have enough room to swim over them so I would literally suck in my stomach in hopes that I wouldn't brush past it!




After Chicken Island was Poda Island which was pretty unremarkable except for the freak rainstorm.  It was this weird little rest stop of an island with a restaurant pavilion that charged way too much money for food and barely anywhere in the water to swim on account of all the boats coming in and out.  Also there were monkeys which made me a little skittish as you will soon find out.

The last leg of the trip was Phranang Cave.  It was an island (peninsula?) we'd been to before, but we hadn't seen the cave.  Outside the cave was a temple of the colorful persuasion.  It was kind of a mash of confusion but people seemed to be praying so we figured it was sacred in some way or another.

The "cave" was a little bizarre.  As far as we could tell, it wasn't a cave in the traditional sense of climb-through-dangerous-but-beautiful-rock-formations-with-stalactites-and-stalagmites-go-spelunking-and-fold-yourself-in-half-to-get-through-that-hole kind of cave, but rather it was more of just a craggy overhang.  Not what we were expecting, but what in this country has been what we'd been expecting?

It was very pretty and one thing that was super cool was that at the back of the cave there was what I thought was a waterfall, but it was actually just an area where there was no cave roof and rain was coming through.  Against the backdrop of the other side of the cave, the rain looked like a waterfall!  That was impossible to capture on film (Do we still say "film" if there's no actual film in use here?  Curious.), but I did get some pretty shots of the actual cave:

One of the funny things about this beach is that there are "food boats" that pull up the shore and are like street vendors on the beach.  We've no idea how they keep everything they need on those little longtail boats but they've got everything you could possibly want, from pad thai and fruit shakes to cheeseburgers and tuna sandwiches.

Torrential downpour?  Not to worry, giant leaves may be used as umbrellas!!

So here's the story about the monkey.

Drumroll please....

So we go snorkeling on Tup, and when we get out of the water to do a little relaxing on the beach, we notice this monkey.  He's kind of adorable and clearly enjoying the tourists (and very very accustomed to getting food from tourists).

Taking food from one of the boat drivers.

If I look a little worried, that's because I am.

We called him Marcel, naturally - and if you have to ask, then you also don't get the title of this post either and I would have to ask you to log onto IMDb asap because otherwise I'll shed tears of pity.

After we'd had enough of the monkey (they get boring fast, turns out), we returned to our towels.  A though occurred to me:  "Man I really hope that thing doesn't surprise me and I turn around and he's sitting next to my head."

Cut to five minutes later when I'm laying on my towel, reading my book, minding my own business when I hear this rustling behind me.  I sit up and the monkey is, you guessed it, sitting next to my head.  Marcel has gone in my bag, taken out candy that my students had given me, and is now unwrapping the candy.

Naturally, we thought this was pretty hilarious, and started snapping pictures and taking video of the little thief.

That's when things started to get a little hairy.  I don't know if the monkey sensed I was going to try to take my bag away from him or he just decided to screw with me, but in an instant, he bared his teeth, made this horrible hissing noise and lunged at me!!

I freaked the heck out, jumped off the beach towel and away from the devil monkey, as did Carlyn and Stacy.  The three of us are standing there as I am literally shaking from head to toe while a small crowd gathers to watch the monkey torture me.

He starts rifling through my bag, pulling out my wallet, my pack of Kleenex, using my bottle of Advil as a rattle and the whole time I'm yelling incoherently ridiculous things at him.  I'm not sure what exactly was said, but I'm pretty I pulled a Lily Aldrin and growled  "youuuuuuuuu sonofabitch!" at him in the same breath that I told him I hoped he got diabetes from eating my candy.  It was like a sitcom.  Each time the monkey pulled something new out of my bag, I made exaggerated arm gestures and helplessly twirled in little panic-circles.

It was a high stress moment.

Finally, after I'm starting to worry that the monkey will begin flinging tampons all over the beach and take my money, we remember our "Thai mom" had given us sandwiches before we left.  We had no intention of eating them since they were green goo on white bread, but they were perfect for getting rid of the monkey (who we were no longer affectionately calling Marcel).

Carlyn tried to unwrap the sandwiches, but when the monkey saw what she was doing, he moved towards us and in a fit of panic, Carlyn flung the sandwiches, wrapper and all, across the beach thus effectively ending the monkey's reign of terror on all of my possessions.

The best part of all this:  Carlyn managed to snap a perfectly timed action shot.  My face is pure terror, and if you look closely enough, the monkey's face - freaking scarrrrry!!!