Monkey business

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Geo: 16.3833, 103.933

Sat in the back garden this afternoon I heard coconuts falling from aneighbours tree and went to investigate. Most of the coconut trees here are too high to pick the nuts yourself so there are chaps who ride around the villages on motorbikes with a monkey sat paillion. Our neighbour has employed one of these monkeys to strip her trees. They use the 'carrot and stick' form of training. If the monkey doesnt climb the tree they beat the crap out of him until he changes his mind !! These particular trees are not too bad and he is soon up the top kicking the cocnuts down. One of the problems for him is that the area where the nuts grow is often full of ants and tics so he spends half of his time scratching himself. After a while he climbs down and the chap lies him on his back and gives him a good scratch all over before sending him back up. They get paid 3Bht (6p) for every cocnut they bring down. The same coconut would sell for about 3 times that much. We used to have three huge coconut trees at the bottom of our garden and when the monkey used to come and see these there was no amount of beating could get him to climb to the top. The trees are still there but are bare after they were hit by lightning a couple of years back. The monkey's made an offering to their Buddha to say thankyou !!!

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