Monkey Beach

(by Margaret:) Things in Ko Phi Phi continue to go well. The weather is great and there is a lot to do. Yesterday we went on a hike through some trails to a beach on the other side of the island called Long Beach. Then we hired a long-tailed boat to ferry us back to our beach. At sunset we sat out at a beach bar drinking Singhas. This was the first night there weren't clouds obstructing our view of the show and it was breath-taking to watch the colors in the sky change from orange to red to colors I don't think I've seen before. We took a lot of pictures, but I don't think my poor little hot pink camera did all that great a job capturing it. For the record, we keep trying to upload pictures, but the network connections here are so slow we can only add a few each time we go to an Internet cafe.

Today we decided to rent a kayak and snorkels (for the handsome price of $6 for the day!) and go around the edge of the island to a place known as "Monkey Beach." I recognize that it sounds cool, but Monkey Beach is a really messed up place; it's pretty much PETA and WWF's worst nightmare. Having heard good things from people staying near us we thought it would be fun to check it out. We kayaked over and left our boat in the sand while we swam out to snorkel around the coral.

At first it seemed really cool, lots of monkeys and baby monkeys just hanging out on the beach a few feet away from us. Then these boats on tourist trips showed up and it got crazy. These two little boys with parents I could have killed started messing with the monkeys (poking them with sticks, throwing small rocks) and the big alpha monkey flipped and attacked the boy, clawing and scratching at his face. I was freaking out and definitely permanently emotionally scarred, the boy's Dad laughed it off and let him keep doing it. Then one group of Japanese tourists started throwing bananas at the monkeys and they all just went crazy. Dozens of crazy freaked out monkeys everywhere, running all over our kayak and stuff on the beach, Tom was fighting them off with one of the kayak oars while I ran away and watched from the water. I wish I had pictures of this, but one of the monkeys was clawing at the bag with the camera in it and there was no way I was going near them in their frenzy to get it. As soon as we saw an opening in the chaos, we kayaked the hell out of Monkey beach. I will never visit the monkey exhibit at the zoo again, those little guys are fierce.

Note: the picture left is of the idiot boy, minutes before he was mauled by an angry monkey. The next picture, you'll have to look closely is of some of the monkeys in the woods before they got mad and stormed the beach. The final picture is one of my favorites of the sunset.