Trip to Monkey Island

Yes, you read that right. I went to Monkey Island.

This weekend my environmental science class went on a field trip to Can Gio, a mangrove forest south of Saigon. We were supposed to focus on the environmental harms that shrimp farms were causing on the mangrove forest, but mostly we looked at the monkeys. I am not dismissing the environmental hazards that shrimp farms cause, I’m just easily distracted by cute furry mammals.

Monkey Island is an island among the mangrove forest that has a large colony of monkeys. The park rangers allow visitors to walk through.  There’s a gift shop, a small carnival type thing, and a taxidermy museum full of dead monkeys.

Now, coming into this trip I had the mental image of Curious George as the monkeys we were going to be seeing. These monkeys were the size of George but had the temperament of King Kong (yes I know monkeys and apes are different, but please go along with the comparison)

These monkeys while cute, were mean and aggressive. Quite frankly I don’t really blame them. If I had a whole bunch of tall, loud, smelly, ugly, white things shoving a camera in my face every day I would probably get pretty upset too.  

Before we went into the park we were warned to make sure that our  bags were tightly fastened to our bodies, and all of our zippers were tied together, because monkeys can jump you and open up just about anything. Most of us only partially heeded this warning, going in with the mentality, “I’m human, I’ve clearly evolved faster than you”

Well it turns out we really haven’t evolved that much at all.

One girl, Hannah, while getting far too close to take a picture of a baby monkey, had her water bottle snatched out of her backpack and ended up playing tug-of-war with another monkey to keep her camera.

It was mamma monkey who stole the water bottle, and there was no way that Hannah was going to get that back. As she watched with dismay, the monkey colony ripped apart her beautiful Camelback water bottle, dissecting it and destroying it, piece by piece. The message was clear, don’t mess with baby monkey, or mamma monkey will mess with you.

Don't mess with mamma monkey

After the monkeys we got to feed some crocodiles. By feed, I mean dangle a large fish off a string in the air and watch the crocodiles snap at the bait. I opted not to do it, not out of fear, but rather I felt like I was taunting the poor creature by dangling food over its head. I didn’t feel bad enough to not take pictures though.

The last part of our trip was a tour of an old Vietcong guerrilla base in the middle of the forest. It is near impossible to walk through a mangrove forest, and navigating the rivers and the complex waterways to get to the army base was so confusing that it’s no wonder that no one ever found these troops. While the remains of the base were cool, I had very mixed feelings about standing “on enemy ground” touring a place especially designed to kill Americans.  One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

Vietcong base hidden among the mangrove trees

All in all, the trip was incredibly enjoyable. Monkeys, crocodiles, mangrove forests, all in one day, what could be better?