Picturebook of Tioman I - Monkey Breakfast

I'm sitting on the veranda of the chalet I stayed at, right by the beach, just separated from the sand and water by a concrete path, for all intends and purposes the main street in Air Batang, and a few coconut palms. A soft breeze from the sea stirs the air and cools me down a little. It is early morning, and I am reading my book and waiting for the restaurant to open to get a coffee. The two kids staying next door are still asleep, having left half-empty packs of nuts and empty beer and coke cans on their table outside. A monkey family comes by, on their morning stroll in search of a bite here and there. One of the thousands of cats on the island gets in their way and is chased away with angry snarls and a short pursuit, just to make sure it gets the message. My two flatmates, a young grey male with a crooked tail and a black-and-white old female that likes to sleep with the tongue out, look up warily, but the monkeys have no interest in them at all. Instead, they immediately close in on the garbage. The nut packs are the first of course, expertly one of them rips it open a little more and they all fish out the last nuts in the pack. Another checks the drink cans for remains,  and takes extra care that no drop of the beer is wasted, that seems to be a favourite not only of humankind... They examine each piece of garbage they can find, even go through the plastic bag that is stuffed with empty bags of crisps and more cans, and check under the veranda for anything that may have fallen through the space between the floor boards. 

I find it fascinating to watch them. How expertly they handle all the items, how they bring the cans to their mouth and tilt their heads, and then come back down and look at me with that what-are-you-looking-at stare, just like humans. How they pick up nuts and remove the shell and then put them in the mouth, with two fingers, just like humans. And then they swing themselves off the chair or table backwards, legs extended at weird angles and in almost impossible contortions, and you notice that as yet there are still a few differences between us after all, while you watch them walk lazily away on all fours or climb up the nearest palm to the powerline over the path, making their way to the next veranda with a hopeful yield of left-overs.