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In the Monkeys Beach
During my travels, I noticed differences among countries and I also witnessed parallel phenomena. For an instance, In Turkey, there is an Island near Istanbul called the "Princes Island". That Island, in the Byzantine era was used as an exile for trouble making Princes. The Turkish Government decided to keep it in the pre-20th century state, in order to make it a tourism attraction. For that reason, the only transportation means you will find there, is horse- pulled wagons.
Similar to that, in Phe Phe Island (pronounced in Thai language as pee pee 
), south of Thai Land, you will never see cars. And even motor-bikes are not allowed to be used by the public. There is, though, a limited number of motor-cycles connected to 2-wheels carts used for the transportation of materials to shops and for collecting garbage bags. There are, however, many bicycles. And if your hotel is located far from the beach where you landed you can hire someone to pull your luggage in a 2-wheels cart.
There, in Phee Phee Island, you can go in a 5 hours sea tour where you can observe some of the most brilliant manifestations of nature and attend, or rather live, a comedy play, authored and directed by Mother Nature and performed by monkeys in the theater of the Monkeys Beach.
As we, me and my primitive wooden boat pilot, approaching the Monkeys Beach, around 5 pm, I got overwhelmed by the vista.
The Monkey Beach is a small beach, of about 200 meters in width and 20 meters in depth. It has the shape of a crescent lying there in the lap of a magnificent vertically standing mountain. To be able to visualize the view, picture a huge old man wearing a green garment with very baggy sleeves while hugging a half moon.
In the middle of the beach, there is a narrow tunnel-like passage that leads you to a semi-circular space in the heart of the mountain with a big opening in the top. That is the Monkeys Hall room where they meet in order to socialize, and maybe discuss important issues pertinent the Monkeys community.
In the beach, there were a number of small monkeys of different ages performing different activities, some hanging on the trees, some researching the ground for something to eat, some running here and there on the mountain and some are setting there watching me as I was taking pictures of them and probably trying to make a sense of what I was doing.
Apparently, the monkeys got bored of me and my picturing behavior so they just went up the mountain and left me alone. I turned, then, to the Ocean. I put my beer can between my feet since I felt a wind starting to blow and kept on taking pictures of everything from every possible angle when an old monkey suddenly showed up. He, when I spotted him, was roughly 20 meters from me. I felt excited and got involved in picturing him as he was approaching me. He was walking towards me with a remarkable self-confidence. When he got within centimeters from me, he went ahead and picked up my beer can with his little semi-human hands and gave me a curious look with those tiny sharp rounded eyes. Then, he dropped the can and gave me the same look again as if asking me: what can you do about that freak? Well, I can do nothing. You are a monkey and I am a human, I am the one who managed to evolve not you. Actually, I was afraid that the monkey may make a sudden jump to grab my mobile and run up the mountain. I wouldn't be able to run after him. I can't climb vertical mountains! I already lost 2 mobiles, one in Ukraine, one in Turkey, and I didn't the third one to be stolen by a monkey.
When he made sure that I was not willing to fight for my beer, he picked it up and started to sip. I said to him cheers relative and he gave me a weird gaze. I think I read his mind. He was wondering: what are you trying to say freak? Anyway, I felt it is not nice to let my relative drink a beer on an empty stomach. So, I went back to the boat where I had 2 large slices of pizza, one I already offered to my tourist guide, the other was supposed to be my breakfast and lunch. I cut my share of the pizza into 2 halves and took one of them to give to the monkey, my beer peer. I handed him the pizza, he snatched it with his little hand, dropped it, visually examined it, smelled it and after he made sure that it's okay, he started to slowly chew it. That action, made me think that monkeys had known the concept of quality control and assurance, by common sense, long before Walter A. Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran came to write books about it.
That monkey, with those looks he gave me, I tell you, made me see him as a mute human. I found in that
an evidence ha support Charles Darwin claim that we and the Monkey species have descended from the same ancestor, i.e., relatives. But, in the first book of the Bible, namely the book of Genesis, it says that God created man in his image. Well, I saw in that monkey my image. So, you can say that the monkey , who stole my beer, is the image of his image.
But, was the monkey rude when he took my beer? I don't think so.
The real rude monkeys are there in my country, western side of Saudi Arabia. From the top the mountains they, often. stone people. Sometimes they attack villages late at night in order to steal food and break things. In one of their raids, they even, kidnaped a baby. These are the aggressive monkeys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFcoC1FJOhA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWwORTCdXGI
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Fahad AL Fayez
3 am
Sep 10, 2013
Phuket, Thailand
