We were driving along a highway on the southern Thai peninsula when we were passed by a pick up truck full of coconuts and a monkey hanging from the side. It was such a spectacular site, I had to speed up so we could get a picture of the preposterous pairing. As we gained on the vehicle, we began to speculate on how the monkey ended up in the back of a pickup truck racing down the highway.

Our best guess is that it hopped into the truck as it was headed out of the jungle, and now the poor thing was hanging on for dear life as it barreled down the highway at 60 mph. We worried about the monkey’s family and how distressed it would be when it arrived at a location miles from home.

By the time we arrived at our own destination, a secluded beach resort on the coast, we quickly forgot about the stowaway monkey. The next morning I woke up and went for a walk along the beach. I saw a truck with a man tossing coconuts he’d collected into the back of his pickup. On the side was a monkey tied to a rope. 

I quickly pulled out my camera and approached to take a picture. The monkey began to go wild, and the man cautioned me not to get too close. It was then that the mystery of the stowaway monkey pieced together in my head. 

The monkey we had seen the previous day belonged to the owner of the truck. It was kept tethered to the vehicle so that it could guard the coconuts while the man was out in the jungle gathering more, and thus I labeled it the Thai monitor monkey.