Monkeying Around

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As many of you know, Asia does have a lot of hawkers and their ability to extract money from you by either selling or offering services never ceases to amaze and also brass me off. That is until the other day at The Monkey Temple where I witnessed the most awesome piece of Balinese entrepreneurship I have ever seen. The Monkey Temple is situated on the edge of a cliff face on the southern side of Bali and is so named because of the ‘sacred’ monkeys that live there. I was warned not to leave anything dangling as the monkeys steal anything from the visitors - this was proven to be true when the Balinese guy who told me this had his cap ripped off his head and the monkey then jumped up to a point that was out of reach and proceeded to eat the cap. OK, so you’ve got the general picture so back to the Balinese entrepreneurial spirit...
I am walking along one of the outer paths of the temple with a 4 foot wall between me and approx 150 foot drop when this monkey runs by on the wall towards a Japanese tourist who is stood having his picture taken with his back against the wall. The monkey reaches round and snatches the (obviously expensive) glasses off the guys face and runs back along the wall (to no doubt devour along with my friend’s cap). With this a Balinese woman runs forward meeting the monkey head on and thrusts a bag of fruit in front of it. The monkey drops the glasses and grabs the fruit, and runs off, the women throws out her hand and saves the glasses falling 150 foot into the Indian Ocean. The Japanese tourist runs forward saying ‘thank you, thank you,’ at which point the woman holds out her hand and rubs her thumb and index finger together in a ‘talk is cheap, give me some cold hard cash’ sort of way. Superb !

Jim Panzee.
‘Monkeys are my business... I’m into monkey business’

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