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!
