A monkey stole my cell phone

After a busy 4 day Scuba Open Water Certification course, I finally had a day on the island to just relax. Hearing about the monkey bay from several people, it seemed like a good place to visit. There are two ways of getting there, a 45 minute jungle hike or a RM20 boat ride. (RM3.3 to US$) I decided to take a boat there and return through the jungle. Just as I was about to book the ride there, I saw Ni, a guy that I met at the B&J diving school on the island wandering around on the beach so I invited him to come along. Five minute boat ride and we were on an empty white sand beach with no promised monkeys in sight. I was warned that the monkeys are quite clever and can steal bags, so I attached both of our backpacks to a log with a cable, locking the bottom section of my backpack that contains my SLR. The top section of my bag had my point and shoot camera, along with a cell phone and some potato chips. I bet the monkey was watching me fiddle around with the bag at this point. I zipped up the top section of my bag, tucking the zippers in all the way down on one side of that back to make it harder to get into. Ni said he wasn't going to swim and could keep an eye on the bags, so I went for a far swim to look for a good spot to snorkel. I swam quite far off shore, at least half a mile but I couldn't find the corals. During my search, I spotted a boat that had scuba tanks which meant that they'd know where the coral is. I swam to the boat which turned out to belong to my scuba school, so I climbed up to take a break. I hung out relaxing on the boat for a bit, drinking orange juice and chatting with the instructors. They pointed out the good snorkel spots, so I hopped off the boat and swam around observing all kinds of marine life.
Maybe an hour or so into my swim, I decided to return to shore to get my camera. When I got out on the beach, Ni told me that a monkey stole my potato chips. It sounded like a joke, I didn't believe him. He assured me he was serious. While Ni was only knee deep in water, a monkey did indeed come off a tree and went right for my bag. Ni tried shouting and throwing rocks at it, but the monkey wasn't phased. It probably was laughing, thinking "Ha, silly tourist will never be able to hit me with a rock." By the time Ni made it to my bag, the monkey already disappeared in the jungle. I examined the contents of my bag and my cell phone appeared to be missing. After a long search in all the numerous pockets, we came to a realization that the monkey grabbed the phone along with the chips. Ugh! Spending a few minutes looking for the phone, I realized that it's silly. I went for another swim, this time with my camera and hiked back to Salang Bay, the town we were staying in. I snapped a few pictures of the jungle and this iguana lizard animal thing that I suspect might have been poisonous because it had no fear of me.


I wonder if the scuba rules of underwater creatures apply in this case; if something is really pretty, really ugly or isn't afraid of you, DON"T touch it. :-/ I continued thinking about how to recover my phone and realized that the phone has an alarm set for 7:55am. I figured that if I can make it out there by the time the alarm goes off, I can still recover the phone. (To be continued...)

P.S. I haven't had a chance to say happy birthday to my aunt Frida and my sister in law Lena. Happy Birthday!!! Sorry I couldn't call :(