Monkey Business on Ko Samui Island, Thailand

Monkey Training 101

One of the great things about speaking on cruise ships is that every now and then one gets the chance to accompany tour groups on behalf of the ship.  Cruise ship companies are very much involved with looking after the comfort and safety of their passengers afloat or ashore on ship arranged tours.  Often they extend their care and presence by having ship's company personnel tag along with tour groups, just in case.  The just in cases include maybe needing a Kleenex or a band aid or a handi wipe or even a barf bag, some of the tools of the ship's escort trade packed in a special handbag provided by the ship.

Recently I was pleased to escort a minibus full of sightseers from AZAMARA QUEST on a trip around the island of Ko Samui, an up and coming destination in the Gulf of Thailand, over toward Malaysia and Singapore.

Ko Samui boasts that it is one of the really prime places for coconuts in Asia.  When you think of the number of coconut palms around the Pacific Rim that is a big boast for a small island.  The locals delight in carrying tourists around to some of the places where they grow and process coconuts.  Should I call the places Coconut Plantations or Coconut Ranches or Coconut Farms or what they really are,  wide spots on the road where they grow coconuts?  Okay, wide spots it is.

The Coconut Husking Lady & Her Sharp Blade

The palms are tall and hard to climb and there is not really a coconut season, pick one and others start up and just keep on growing.  These qualities make harvesting them a bit of a problem.  Someone has to climb up the skinny trunk and select the ripe ones from the not ripe ones and then break the tough stem that ties the coconut to the big bunch of leaves and trunk that make up the top of the tree.  That is a task that requires judgement, an exquisite sense of balance and strength enough to break the fibre filled stem while holding on for one's literal life.  That is a tough job for any guy.  

How would you get it done if you owned a batch of coconut palms that needed harvesting every day or so?  If it were my problem, I would get a really strong, smart and willing guy for the job.  That's just what the locals do, only they use monkeys.  The monkeys can learn lots of things but they have not yet learned about unreasonable bosses who want them to do dangerous things for a few bananas or whatever Thai monkeys get to eat.  That makes them primo candidates for  coconut harvesters.

We got to see how the monkeys are trained and it was quite a show.  Actually, there is not much I can say except the handler or professor of monkey technology or whatever title he has clipped a rope on the monkey's collar and pointed at the tree.  Maybe he also told the monk "Get your monkey butt up there, Waldo" or something in monkey talk but I can't tell monkey from Thai so I think the pointing was the message.

The Star of the Show Taking  His Bow

The monkey climbed the tree better and faster than most of the passengers could climb a bar stool.  When he got there he started to fondle the nuts and picked out a winner.  There is an old rule when you go to sea and are working in heavy weather or inside a tank or someplace where falling is likely:  One hand for me and one for the ship.  The monkey used the same rule and held on to the trunk with one hand and kept twisting the coconut until the stem broke and he sent it to a mat next to the tree.  The crowd cheered, the monkey smiled or grimaced or leered at us below and came back down the tree to the applause of the crowd.

He was a ham and spent much time on a tree stump posing for Kodak Moment at the Coconut Plantation.  What a performer.  It was time to go so I asked the real guide if he could get the monkey handler to have the monk give us a final salute.

Here is the Monkey's Goodbye.

Here's Looking at Ya, Kid