Yesterday we checked out the Ten Thousand Buddhas. Pretty cool. This isn’t marketing, like when you go into a McDonald’s that says “10 billion served” and you look around and you’re like, “whatever. I don’t see 10 billion people.” There are indeed more than ten thousand Buddhas on premises.

There are also monkeys. Wild monkeys. Mean bastards. And yesterday afternoon they decided to take the three of us on. An old male monkey elder with big haunches and a knotted tail joined up with a lithe youngster to perch on the wall along the stairs leading down from the temple area. I tried to get passed but the younger one hissed at me. The older one — that’s the guy in the photo above, taken by Dr. No — kept that same volatile expression, like Marlon Brando for Vivian Leigh or maybe the local buffet.

We stood there, not knowing what to do, until a local woman whose job it was to sweep the steps took them on. She took her broom and metal dustpan and whacked them together and shouted at them in Cantonese until, frightened of confused (maybe they know only Mandarin?) the monkeys left. She got a standing O from us stranded visitors.

More photos to the left.