Honestly, after my monkey experiences in Thailand, and at Pura Lempuyang, I was pretty ok with not seeing any monkeys again for a long time, but then I somehow found myself at the Monkey Forest in the center of Ubud.
It was basically terrifying, there are tons of monkeys, and they are so used to tourists being there and hand feeding them that they aren’t scared of people, so they will come right up to you, and jump and climb all over you.
The monkeys can get kind of territorial over the bananas that people bring in to feed to them, I saw a lot of monkeys chasing each other and fighting, and I tried to stay as far away from that as possible, because I had a friend that visited here a few months ago and she ended up getting bit by one of them.
I was not taking that chance, I’ve seen Outbreak, I know what happens.
A lot of the other people there did not share my feelings, and were letting the monkeys crawl all over them and their children, so they could get pictures taken.
There was a tiny new baby monkey that was just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. He kept trying to sneak away from his mom to get more bananas from the crowd, and she would grab him by the tail and pull him back against her.
I saw one person with a bunch of bananas break off one and hand it to the mother, and she grabbed it, handed it to the baby, and then snatched all of the rest of the bananas out of his hand before he had time to react.
The Monkey Forest is a pretty famous attraction in Ubud, and you should check it out if you’re there, even if you are terrified of monkeys. As long as you keep your distance, don’t feed them, and don’t try to steal the cute little baby (who would have fit perfectly inside my purse and nobody would have ever been any the wiser) you should make it out unscathed.
