PART 1: Be careful what you ask for. I asked for adventures and I got these!!

If you ever asked a backpacker why he/she travels, I’m sure you got a vast array of responses depending on the person; many will say that they travel to widen their horizons and many others will say because they want to see the world.

Both are indeed exceptional reasons and to be honest, if you get any of those answers, then I would say that enough said. However there is a common wish among all the backpackers in the world that remains unsaid; we travel the world to discover it but we want to discover it through adventures and who does not want them? Adventures they force you to live moments with  intensity and passion, no adventure remains untold.

 We read, watch and listen often to people talk about intense moments they experienced on their travels that make us wonder why, in the name of God, we think that losing the last bus home or getting the wrong shot of coffee in our take away Capuccino is an adventure. Well, as it happens, adventure when you are backpacking in far away countries can be a tiny bit risqué than that and luckily for you I’m here to provide with you some examples that I can, looking back now, officially declare them as adventures, tell me if you disagree!

1. The monkey attack in Thailand

While en route in Thailand (my first time, so many things I had still to learn back then) I though that it would be a great idea to visit the monkey temple in Lupbury and off I went on an adventurous train journey that should have already warned me that the day was not going to end up well. Innocent as I was I truly thought that things could only get better in Lupbury, after all, I was going to see a city with monkeys as habitants and also I thought the macaques looked very cute so how could I not enjoy that? How exotic and anti daily life in London was to be surrounded by monkeys?

 

 

I made my way to the Monkey Temple and I started to shot pictures like a mad woman to all monkeys that they would appear on my radar until “the monkey” appeared. He stood in front of me and looked at me straight in the eyes.

I was transfixed by him and I looked back at him, I could just not resist, there it was, a strange connexion between the human and the animal...you could have thought that a woman and a monkey just fallen in love only that after a few seconds of observing each other and before I had time to react, I saw his face a millimetre away from mine and the next thing I know is that the monkey was on my arm biting me!! Now, and believe this is true, when something like this happens you DO NOT THINK, you just react and I reacted in the most animalistic way I could so I grabbed the, previously cute monkey, now complete evil and threw him to the floor smashing him against it. I mean, what else I could do??? He ran away, DID NOT DIE, ok????

To be honest, we both ran away, I think we were both terrified of each other! He run inside the temple and I ran to closest emergency stand outside the temple, in complete different directions. I think I imagined the connexion, obviously, we never had one. 

Now lesson to be learn; if you see an emergency/medical stand outside a temple full of monkeys, what that tells you?? Exactly! Keep the distance or be ready to attract attention, most possible, the wrong attention. From that moment on, the monkeys and I keep distance, is not meant to be...