Thursday, April 7, 2016

Encounters with the curiously familiar faces of Khao Sok National Park



Dusky Langur at Khao Sok National Park

I heard the whoosh of a tree branch swinging upward, suddenly relieved of its occupant high above my head - what I was quickly learning is the sound of a monkey jumping through the canopy. I crane my neck back and peer into the dense mosaic of leaves. Up near the heart of a towering palm, I see an impossibly sweet face, like an otherworldly doll, staring back down at me. The face is surrounded by soft black fur and attached to a human-like body holding something that wiggles and then turns to stare at me too – its impossibly adorable baby, clad in a striking cloak of golden fur. I fumble excitedly for my camera, but find nothing! Then it dawns on me – Bobby and I are hiking along the main trail of one of Southern Thailand's biggest outdoorsy tourist attractions, Khao Sok National Park, and I set my camera down when we stopped for a snack a few minutes ago without picking it back up again! 

That was super smart thing #1. Then I commence super smart thing #2, which is to start sprinting back down the trail without leaving my bouncing backpack and swinging binoculars with Bobby. It was, of course, much further than I thought, as I huffed up and down the rocky roller-coaster dirt track through woolly curtains of humidity, past confused hikers, scanning the leaf litter for the log I remember squatting on as I scarfed down some salty dried fish and fruits. It didn't seem like the kind of park that would draw opportunistic thieves, but I wheezed and jogged as fast as I could, just in case. It had been 4 months since my last jog, and I could feel it. Several hundred meters down the trail I spied my camera waiting patiently by the log, snagged it, and ran/hobbled back. I passed a bewildered couple and tried to explain myself in between gasps, but the man shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and said something to his partner in French. 


 Dusky Langur

By the time I got back to where Bobby and now a few other hikers were staring up into the trees, the langur with its golden child had evacuated, and I was so completely drenched in sweat I could have wrung it out into a reeking, DEET-spiked cocktail. This was made even more embarrassing by the fact that I was wearing my old mosquito-ridden-jungle field clothes from Samoa: ill-fitting long sleeve button down and dorky-but-practical quick-dry pants, which were being held up by a fannypack because I neglected to pack a belt. Quite surprisingly, after all the internet research we had done, there were no mosquitoes, and most other tourists were hiking along in fashionable tank tops and booty shorts, as if they were strolling back from the white sand beaches of Phuket. Thank god we didn't take all the chat forums' advice and buy leech socks – what seemed basically like heavy canvas tubes that you wear under your hiking socks and pull up past your knees! We had clearly arrived in Thailand during a pleasantly mosquito-less, leech-less and of course rain-less dry season, and I looked forward to reassessing my wardrobe tomorrow!

A legitimate gibbon, called White-handed Gibbon, glimpsed through the canopy later at Sri Phang Nga National Park

Meanwhile, I scanned the canopy anyway and spotted a few dusky loiterers. Two were playfully grooming and wrestling each other on a fallen log, but were edged out by approaching macaques – another long-tailed monkey species that seem much more comfortable around the hordes of tourists. An American woman dragging two bored teenagers came up and asked what we were looking at. I mistakenly called them gibbons, because that's what the owner of our lodge had mentioned last night as part of the expected morning chorus. She got excited, having never seen a gibbon in the wild, and began rummaging through her backpack for binoculars. As I struggled to direct her gaze toward the retreating langurs, her sons snickered and shouted, MOM! We both turned around to find a little macaque galloping away with a gigantic bag of Lays potato chips. He had apparently snatched it right out of the closed backpack slumped at her feet, and proceeded to settle on a branch at eye-level along the trail, deftly rip open the crinkly packaging, and stuff his face with BBQ snacks as the other gawkers filmed it from smartphones and ipads.

Macaque with prize

Bobby and I planned this trip for the birds, but I have to admit that seeing monkeys in the wild was almost more thrilling than all the exotic sounds and colors flitting through the canopy on wings. There is something so strange about having this little human-shaped creature walk alongside you, look up at you with expressive eyes, pick up objects with tiny, dexterous hands, and sit hunched over like a little old man so it can manipulate, contemplate, and nibble. Observing these little beings, I could really empathize with the original storytellers of these parts, who wove epic tales full of spirits and sacred beings that have their own agendas and lives. Monkeys are so familiar to us, even without science constantly confirming their genetic links. Across the globe, primates are used as pharmaceutical proxies, their sacrificed lives making medicine safe for us, research into neurology possible, cures for diseases reality. But in the jungle, coming face to face, what matters is this: their forward facing eyes can look into our own, like sharing a gaze between eons of evolution. Not to suggest evolution as a linear path - them to us. Who is to say which is more advanced? The humans who are cleverly inventing their own demise, or the monkeys who snatch chips from their backpacks?

 Young macaque pensively nibbling


 
Ok, the birds were amazing too: Wallace's Hawk Eagle with squirrel breakfast, seen screaming over the trail moments before this story!

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