Our group was welcomed by a group of monkeys....
like those in a monkey mount in Hong Kong that I visited some months ago.... In Hong Kong's monkey park, monkeys large and small roam around a mount area in the vicinity of a reservoir used to store drinking water for the population. Monkeys there understand the behavior of families and groups passing by (taking the time on holidays to stretch their muscles and enjoy fresher air away from the busy city centre) more than the other way round. The animals are smart. The naughty, or braver, ones will sometimes try to snatch supermarket shopping bags from people, in particular kids. Scaring people and intimidating them by numbers before mugging them. Last time I was there with a couple of old friends, an adult monkey showed his teeth when we crossed a bridge. And he challenged us by urinating in front of us while teething at us...
The monkeys I saw were however friendly and welcoming. We were led up a grass slope, not steep, a relaxing stroll. Leading us to somewhere on the top of a low mount. Nice scenery, open air, and it was most refreshing. Our group consisted of young and old. The young kids in front played with the younger monkeys who were jumping up and down while leading the way. The kids had so much fun with them (unlike the almost antagonistic attitude of those monkeys by the reservoir). "Young people always have lots of energy, no matter they are humans or monkeys", I thought. The monkeys by their nature (i.e. as evidenced in my previous monkey encounter) were afraid of humans. When the kids walked closer to the young monkeys, they would jump away, they did not allow the kids to touch them, though they maintained their welcoming smile all the time. The scene was one of young monkeys jumping up and down leading the way while the kids cheerfully walking up, and with some kids trying, in vain, to touch a monkey. Elder folks like me and my wife were falling behind, though by not much.
An adult monkey approached us. He had a very large face, in proportion to his small body, which came to the size of his head! His face was white with features of eyes, nose and mouth marked out sharply and colorfully, like one of the faces of Peking Opera, but with more white. He was smiling. This elderly monkey led us the way. Like all monkeys he seemed to be afraid of human, when we came closer to him, he would jump away.
"He is an old guy like us, so better not scare him into jumping," I told my wife. When he saw us walking towards him to the direction of the top of the low mount, which area he was leading us, he wanted to jump. Me and my wife stopped immediately. Instead of jumping, he just did a turn and face us again. We were pleased. We kept walking without inciting him to jump. He got a friendly face.
These monkeys were indeed very friendly. I came to the insight that we were going to see more monkeys at the top of the low mount, or perhaps on the opposite side of the mount (clearly we could not see any monkey on top from our vantage point). "Will those monkeys on top be less friendly, I mean will it be that these friendly monkeys are only here to persuade us to walk up?" and with this thought on, I realized that some kids had gone inside a passenger car. I suddenly realized that I had left something in the car and I got inside it too. While I was searching for my thing at the back seat, the car started its engine and it turned and moved downhill. I cried out to tell the driver (was there any driver? I did not know) that I did not want to go down. No response. The car kept moving downhill. I was very tired, resting on the back seat and could not get up. The car was on its way down and I asked the driver (there had to be one!) to drop me off anywhere and I would walk up. No response. After going quite a bit downhill, the car, presumably having dropped off the kids, it began to climb up the hill again. I was relieved.
The next thing I knew was the sound of my wife waking me up. Our coach had arrived our destination. It was only a dream.
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