Monkey Mountain

Since arriving in Hong Kong last December we have been talking about taking Naomi to Monkey Mountain. It is really just a hillside not too far from where we live that is home to a lot of wild monkeys. We knew she would love the monkeys, so we set off on our little expedition...

Upon arriving we found this statue with some information about the monkeys. It says that they are not native to Hong Kong, but were most likely pets from southern China that were released into the wild. Apparently they have taken quite well to Hong Kong because they were all over that hillside!

These characters were swinging around, flying through the trees and playing together.

Mommy's little monkey

You can get an idea of how the monkeys are just roaming around in this photo.

Daddy's little monkey

Being surrounded by wild monkeys is not as fun as it sounds. From this photo you can sense the discomfort. They are WILD after all.

Naomi & the monkey statue with the EXACT same expression and tilt of head!

(That was not planned! LOL)

Just moments after we came across this little guy we ran right into a much bigger, much scarier monkey who, as Naomi puts it, wanted to "fight daddy." We were only about 6 feet away and he was baring his fangs and hissing at us. When we tried to make ourselves look bigger to scare him away (as advised by the info board) he actually got closer!

AGGRESSIVE WILD MONKEY!

Yikes. Unfortunately we had to get even closer to him before we could get away. I was sure he was going to jump on my back! Thankfully we made it by okay. Needless to say I have been having monkey nightmares ever since!

For the record: I am NEVER going back to Monkey Mountain!

On a lighter note...I wanted to write a caption about seeing this guy once on the streets in San Francisco (Spare some change?), but Jon said I was insensitive. Too much???