Fish & Monkey Temples

After the van departed, we hopped into a military-style-open-sided truck and headed to what Kung kept calling the fish temple. It was a cave with some buddahs in it, and the back side of the cave opened to the river where a huge school of fish lived. You could buy fish food at the entrance of the cave, and we spent a little time feeding the fish. It reminded me of the Japanese Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden. After the fish temple, we went to the monkey temple. This was a Buddhist complex, a section of which has been over-run by a pack of wild monkeys. You can buy bananas at the entrance to feed them, and they are unafraid of humans. They come right up to you and grab the bananas, and then scamper a few feet away to eat them. There were literally monkeys everywhere. You had to be careful where you stood, because sometimes there would be a monkey in a tree above you, and if you were unlucky they would pee on you. There was one monkey that didn’t look like all the others—Kung said we must be very lucky because she has been there many times and she had never seen this gibbon before. You could tell he was young because he was running around like a crazy man and was jumping and flopping all over the place. After being there for about a half hour, the other tour groups left and Molly and I were once again left with the locals. We followed the gibbon over to a pavilion in which there were three monks—one was on a ladder against a palm tree using a long stick to get coconuts out of the tree, and the other two were inside the pavilion cutting open the coconuts. You once again had to be careful of where you were standing, but instead of looking out for monkey pee you had to look out for falling coconuts! One of the monks spoke excellent English, and he told us that they had rescued the gibbon after its mother had been killed in the wild. The gibbon loved the monks and climbed all over them and let them hold him (when we tried to hold him, he jumped all over the place). He was definitely their pet. They also had a larger monkey in a cage. He wasn’t as cute but was very sweet, and we fed him coconut and he let us hold his hand. It was amazing how much his hands looked like human hands. He had been rescued from the wild after being shot, and was in a cage because if they were to let him out he would try to dominate the other monkeys. Pictures: Feeding the monkeys; The monk getting coconuts out of the tree.