Our cover story was a wild life sight seeing trip, but we were really on a mission rescue a captured group of Christian Missionaries. Our party included.
Aaron Hawkins. 5 years in British Special Forces. Theaters of operation: classified.
Martin Knox. 12 years working as a mercenary in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. Moonlights as a Hank Azaria celebrity look-a-like.
Me. Former US military sniper gone rogue.
And a steroid abusing boat driver who just might be more than he lets on.
Oh, but I joke. We were really there to see wild life, including--we were told--monkeys picking coconuts.
On the boat ride, we saw a few Monitor lizards on the shoreline. They were huge. I didn’t get a photo of them, but because I’m an animal species-ist, I think all monitor lizards look the same, so here’s exactly what they looked like.
When we got to the village, the first thing we noticed were huge spiders, everywhere. Here are two hanging from some giant webs in the tree.
And here’s an up-close and personal shot. Seriously, these guys were enormous.
The village itself had lots of cows, goats, and chickens roaming around. If you don’t believe that birds came from dinosaurs, you’ve never had a rooster try to scare you away. They’re like feathery miniature velocaraptors.
Some buffalo grazing in the field. They didn’t look friendly.
And now the weird part of the journey. We came to a guy's set up where he was training monkeys to pick coconuts. Sort of a cool idea, right? But it's a little different when you see how they're kept.
You can't take a very human looking animal, put it in chains, and have a pleasant image. Apparently it takes three months to train a monkey to climb trees and pick coconuts. After their training they are sold for 150 Ringit (50 US dollars) to people who, I suppose, have an abundance of coconut trees and a shortage of ladders.
Here's video of one of the monkeys playing with our tour guide, trying to grab his watch
And here's video of a monkey climbing a tree to pick coconuts. The video cuts out early, because the monkey became impossible to see, and because this little guy hadn't been trained long and took a long time before finally twisting off a few coconuts.
And I drink a freshly picked coconut.
2 comments:
your journey suspiciously started to sound like the plot of Rambo (Rambo IV some might say). If only it ended with people getting sawed in half by an uber-machine gun and others' heads' being shish-ka-bobbed to a truck by an arrow... then it would be EXACTLY like Rambo.
Joe,
Look, I'm not saying I chopped off a man's head with a machete. But I'm also not saying I didn't chop off a man's head with a machete. Or that I couldn't. Or wouldn't. I am saying that I shouldn't, but who does what they're supposed to do anyway?
Post a Comment