I was on my way to work for four weeks in East Timor. To get to this newly liberated island, you have to fly via Bali. Shame…
I decided to make the most of the situation and stay in Bali for a week. Though I was indeed on holiday, there was no rest from my training routine. So up I got at 6am to do an hour’s run around Ubud, a tranquil town in the centre of Bali surrounded by paddy fields and palms.
The running route took me through Ubud’s town centre. To get back to the hotel was simple from there: straight back through the Monkey Forest. During the day, the Monkey Forest is full of, well, monkeys, hundreds of them accepting bananas and treats from benevolent visitors.
By 6am, those generous tourists had not yet arrived. The monkeys were however already wide awake. And hungry. By the time I arrived, the monkeys were down off their trees and lying on the paths, desperate for their morning banana.
I wasn’t carrying any bananas. This fact was not clearly apparent to the monkeys lying in wait. With a few squeals (on my part) and a quick sprint, I tried to get out of the forest and away from those hungry apes. Fortunately, the monkeys are so well fed by the tourists that they were too fat to move that fast.
At the gate, I stopped to see if I was safe. The monkeys were sat exactly where I had left them: they had decided to wait for the slower tourists to turn up.