An Australian family on vacation in Thailand was attacked by a troop of monkeys on one of the islands of Koh Phi Phi, in southern Thailand.
The testimony of this family has highlighted the fact that every day, tourists are attacked by macaques on Monkey Beach on the very touristy island of Koh Phi Phi Don.
Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu, an Australian couple, have spent nine years sailing around the world and documenting their travels on their YouTube channel Sailing La Vagabonde.
They have amassed 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube thanks to their travel content and were visiting Monkey Beach on the island of Koh Phi Phi Don with their two young sons, Lenny, 5, and Darwin, 1.
The family, who had no idea of the danger, was watching the monkeys on the beach when one of them started rummaging through their bag.
Riley, the 38-year-old father, ran towards the monkey to scare it away from their belongings, but the monkey was not afraid and, contrary to expectations, rushed towards young Darwin.
Riley then took his crying child in his arms, while other angry monkeys approached them.
Riley ran to retrieve the bag left on the beach, but a group of five monkeys pounced on him.
Riley tries to recover their belongings from the aggressive monkeys.
Elayna stated that there was no food in the bag, but the monkeys were determined to take it.
Since there was a passport, their wallets, and their phones, Riley came back without his children to save their belongings, while fighting off the monkeys.
He stated on the Today Show on Thursday:
The lead monkey was walking on the beach and Lenny told me:
“Are we in trouble, Dad? Is he going to hurt me?”
I said “no, it's going to be okay”, but they went for the bag, then Darwin.
He added that they had been attacked.
Elayna stated that her partner had then had to "hit a monkey".
"We can't say he was bitten, but Riley had to hit a monkey and the tooth ended up in his finger in several places," Elayna said on the show.
He ended up with a bleeding cut on his hand caused by the monkey's tooth, which meant he was at risk of contracting rabies, a deadly virus that is transmitted to humans through the saliva of rabid animals.
"The rate of rabies is very high and the mortality rate is 100%.".
Riley said he felt bad about hitting the monkey, but he acted to protect his son.
Elayna was snorkeling when she heard screams coming from the beach.
Another friend who was on the beach at the time said:
"It was very agitated, it was really frightening, he could have been scared (Darwin) for life".
Riley criticized the crowd that watched the scene without doing anything to help.
"It was stunning", he said.
The family then went to town to get medical attention.
Clinic staff said they were treating one to two people a day following monkey bites.
And there don't appear to be any signs to indicate the risk to travelers.
“I have to get at least five injections in or around my wound, then five injections over 20 days, and another one today,” Riley explained in a video of the incident that was shared on their YouTube channel.
“Two injections today, five in my finger and four more over the next 20 days.”.
The injections in his finger are so painful that during one of them Riley fainted.
Elayna explained that the couple had not done any research on the island before going there.
“If we had known that this beach was known for its monkey attacks, we wouldn’t have gone there,” she said.
On the site Tripadvisor, we find other testimonies of monkey attacks, like this one, coming from a Norwegian family whose members were all attacked:
« These monkeys are dangerous.
We knew nothing about the beach and we were attacked by monkeys during our boat tour around Phi Phi.
We were taken to the nearest hospital where we were told that several people are bitten by these monkeys every day.
We arrived around 12 o'clock and we were already numbers 3 and 4 of the day to have been bitten.
Result: expensive and painful rabies vaccination, 5 injections in 1 month for the whole family ».
Video of monkey attack on Koh Phi Phi beach
Source: News.com.au
4 comments
Always idiots filming instead of helping those in need.
5 years ago in Koh Lanta in the National Park we were attacked by two monkeys, first we had our ice cream cone snatched by my Thai companion who was holding it in her hand, and then another one snatched the handbag she was wearing slung over her shoulder, I found myself face to face with this aggressive monkey standing on a picnic table and showing me its teeth, hissing and growling..
Faced with this aggression, several thoughts quickly ran through my mind…
First of all, how is it that we are not protected when we have paid the entrance fee… and then I thought I needed at least a stick to defend myself…
The said assault was very violent and I had to retrieve my wife's handbag…
Luckily, we were lucky, the monkey ran away and left the bag on a tree branch;
All in all, the Thai authorities will have to organize themselves…
Like with poles that would be made available on site and available to all and sundry in case of a monkey attack…
In fact, these monkeys have a higher strength than humans and automatically everyone finds themselves in a victim situation in the face of the latter; therefore, Thailand has an immediate and direct responsibility to contain these phenomena of aggression, towards the public.
These people want sensationalism, maximum views! It's done, they should be happy!
Hello,
Thank you for allowing us to react.
Maybe I'm going to shock a lot of people. That's not my goal.
My goal would be to try to put things and everyone (including ourselves) back in their rightful place.
But which doesn't necessarily suit us.
You can see me coming from a mile away, better than the famous monkeys? Even better: there's still hope!
Indeed, it seems that these monkeys are at home on this territory that is ours, to us humans, only because a forgotten ancestor once planted the flag of one of our Royal Majesties.
The question today is enormous: what are we going to do with these millions of permanent tourists, the question also arises in Thailand for other reasons and everywhere on the planet, from the highest alpine pastures and icy ridges of the Annapurna to the icy shores of Greenland, without forgetting all the supposedly primary rainforests or the beaches supposed to belong, among others, to our primate cousins who intend to assert their rights there?
Without waiting for any peace treaty à la Sitting Bull, these macaques dare to defy the divine right of human property on their beaches and on our handbags!
Unfortunately, we know what's next: whoever wants to get rid of their monkey accuses it of rabies.
Personally, I would have thought that, in the current global situation, the most furious are not necessarily those referred to here.
And if I'm enraged, as a primate and a human, it's because of this mass tourism and indifference: I, Homo Sapiens, claim the right to live on my planet, just like the first common marmoset that comes along.
Ouch! We have a sizeable problem!
That of our ubiquitous population and our pretension to be everywhere at home, a pretension that is starting to be doubted sufficiently to attempt to electronically tamper with it soon…
But, if I'm not mistaken (doctor 🙂 Sorry: obliged), it's essentially to recover, among other things, its electronic prostheses, that we've been bitten!
What will become of us if the macaques come to hack our dear networks?
Seriously, the problem is us. And it's a big one. A hint?
“The Little Prince” which was written in 1943, tells us about a world population then of… 2 billion humans. Yes, yes!
Let's consult our current “data” and try to get Sapiens to regain some of its wisdom by leaving, it's depressing, I know, a bit of space coming back to the beast.
Even if I get angry myself in front of every "reserve" sign, it's really also my home.
But without these reserves, see what's left of humanity between the great confrontations of this world and their millions of migrants. Without reserve.
Sorry to be as dark as the horizon of this century. But without animals, the only savagery left will be our own.
Thank you for reading me.