Bali - Sacred Monkey Temple

Marina
May 10, 2016
2 min read

For safety reasons, my friends and I explored Bali with a travel company. The agency provided us with transportation to a whole slew of tourist attractions. The first stop was at a fabric weaving place where I learned the different techniques of dyeing fabric using wax. From there, I visited a silver making shop where they actually make everything by hand. It is funny how foreign it was for me to see people making things by hand instead of assuming that a machine created everything! The next stop was the monkey forest. This was my low point of the day. I had read so much about this Sacred Monkey Temple in Ubud. I knew that if you held a banana above your head a monkey would crawl up and eat it! That sounded so exciting for me! Who wouldn't want a little monkey friend?

Well, me. Once I got there the monkey seemed a lot bigger than in the pictures. I knew they were not tamed but I was picturing more of a domesticated environment. I could not have been more wrong. These WILD monkeys took over the entire park. They were climbing everywhere. Sometimes they would crawl up people who didn't even have a banana! My friend, Caroline, wore a backpack and the monkeys loved the straps hanging down and three of them jumped right on her.

Seeing this I was getting more and more nervous to have these beasts jump on me. But "when in Bali..."

So I bought a bundle of bananas and our tour guide helped. He held one above my head and before I new it I was covered in monkeys. One somehow got on my head and another pulled down my shirt and pants. I was standing in the middle of the Monkey Forest in Ubud getting undressed by wild monkeys... I froze up and didn't really remember the experience so I decided to try one more time with another banana. I conveyed to the man who worked there I only wanted the little monkeys because the big ones scared me. He laughed and nodded. So we tried again and a little monkey jumped up and then another one. What they don't tell you is that if a baby monkey is on you, watch out for mama! Before I knew it, this massive beast lunged at me trying to protect her babies. I don't think I've ever spoken so sternly -- this man-voice comes out of me as I'm telling the guy to get them off. I look over and he's laughing at me!

So I would not say that this experience went as planned. But really, how many people can say that they had a monkey foot in their mouth?!

I think these really capture how I felt during the experience.