This is the first in a series of thirty of my best stories – one for every year I have been alive. Every word of this series will be true. Every detail accurate to the best of my memory. Truth is always stranger than fiction.
Holy Christmas. It was December 25th, 1995. I knew my day was destined to be weird when I awoke in a hotel room in Kota Kinabalu Malaysia, turned on the TV and learned that Dean Martin had died.
German tourists are the bane of my father’s existence. If you run into one couple in your hotel lobby, rest assured there’s at least another hundred nearby – as they always travel in large packs. They have this infuriating strategy of getting up before dawn, going down to the pool area of whatever resort they’re occupying to “claim” every available chaise lounge for Germany – by laying their towels over them. Then they go back to their rooms to continue to sleep off all of the schnitzel and Rumplemintz from the night before. Usually until 11 am. A Beach Blanket Blitzkrieg.
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On vacation the year before, close friends of my parents – who shall remain nameless – snuck out right after all the Germans had returned to their beds to rearrange the towels into an enormous swastika. My father’s tactics are just slightly more subtle, and after he threw the towels of four still slumbering krauts into a pile on the patio, we sat down and set about discussing what we would do that day.
Resort pamphlets had advertised a tour where a guide takes your party by outboard motorboat around the South China Sea to a series of nearby islands. We located the dock where a group of fellow tourists was gathering and signed up for the next sortie. Soon two native Malaysians appeared with life jackets, fishing line and a cooler then instructed us to climb aboard.
The guide’s name was Raphael, or “Raffi” as we began to refer to him. I am not sure if he appreciated the nickname, but we’d never met someone with the same name as our beloved Canadian children’s singer. Raffi took us around to an island where we swam and were assured “No sharks, 100%!”. I pulled on some fins and a mask and started chasing a squid to see if I would get inked. Then we fished with spools of line and pulled out some of the freakiest looking aquatic specimens this side of Atlantis. But nothing could prepare me for my lunch on “Monkey Island”.
Raffi and his assistant grabbed the cooler and led us to an area where they started to prepare lunch. The island was about two square miles in size, with sandy beaches and a steep hill in the middle covered in jungle. I wandered away from my family, small disposable Kodak in hand, to explore a little bit. I came across a Japanese man and his son who were staring up at a tree and laughing. He reached into a bag and pulled out a piece of watermelon before throwing it straight up into the air. I followed the path of the watermelon’s flight and noticed a monkey sitting in a high branch staring off into space. When the watermelon got up to him, he snatched it out of the air while looking in the opposite direction. The three of us had a giggle and I continued on my way. That’s when I noticed that the island was literally crawling with spider monkeys.
Used to stupid tourists with “food source” stamped on their foreheads, a large pack of monkeys with absolutely no fear of humans stood in the tree line of the jungle – dashing out occasionally to steal apples, bags of chips, whatever was left unattended. I remembered the small Japanese child I had just met and wondered if he might end up a series of large monkey turds.
The little buggers seemed small enough, and I decided to follow a path into the jungle not particularly concerned by potential primate problems. Erosion and tree roots had created a natural staircase up the side of the hill and it cut through the dense surrounding jungle. I reached the top and followed another path until I got within sight of the beach where everyone had started eating. I had just decided to head back when I heard a loud “EEEEP!” coming from my left.
I turned around and came face to face with a nest of ten spider monkeys. They were quite upset at my intrusion, and were walking back and forth and staring at me. A large male appeared from behind them and began sizing me up. He looked pretty funny with his little moustache, beard and bushy eyebrows, but I knew right away he was this particular monkey pack’s “goon” and I should probably think about high tailing it. But I had to get a picture.
Anyone who has ever used a plastic disposable camera knows that when you wind the film it makes a loud clicking sound. This was news to the monkey posse, and when I started cranking the spool forward, the screaming increased and the enforcer moved forward. He bared his signifigant toothage at me and charged. Here are the two photos I managed to take before the monkey business began.
There was a forgettable film released in 1995 called Congo. I had just seen it, and one scene in particular jumped into my mind. Scientists hiking through the jungle stumble across a huge gorilla who subsequently charges them. The guide tells them to “Stay still and don’t move a muscle” in the face of this enormous creature. They manage to do so, and the Gorilla stops in front of them and then scampers.
My new little monkey buddy was a far cry from a gorilla, but all I could picture were those teeth sinking into my calf as I attempted to run away. So I made a grumpy face, stared into it’s eyes and stood my ground. The monkey closed the distance between us in about 2 seconds flat and then stopped at my feet – staring up into my face. When it became apparent he was all “EEEEP” and no bite, I stomped my foot and screamed back at him, sending the whole crew packing into the jungle like the starters pistol of the Boston Marathon.
Dear readers, I hope that I’ve imparted some monkey wrangling wisdom you can take with you on your next trip to New Guinea, the Amazon, a Dave Matthews concert – anywhere there might be large groups of shirtless apes waiting to start trouble.
