Padangtegal Monkey Forest: I visited this forest when I went to Bali in 1987. These monkeys were frightening! Growling and showing their teeth, they jumped on us and were incredibly aggressive. The guide who knew very little English kept saying “don’t panic.” Yeah, right. They perched on high walls and jumped off of them onto your shoulders and tried to steel your earrings, camera, whatever.

After we left the temple we were standing in a parking lot waiting for our van to take us back to Candidasa when a male monkey started acting aggressively toward me. I thought, “Geez, I don’t want that sucker biting me!” He had huge teeth with long canines and was baring his teeth and snarling at me. So, I picked up a big rock and was going to bean him with it! Several men sitting nearby jumped up and stopped me and chased the monkey off. Good God.

They were small, like about 10-15 lbs, but in force very scary. They seemed like the winged monkeys in the Wizard of Oz! Later when we went to Malaysia there were monkeys at a park we visited and I was terrified of them. Our guide said, “Our monkeys are friendly – you must have seen monkeys in Bali?” The monkeys in Malaysia were sweet and took a piece of banana out of my hand without aggression. They were adorable.