Before the read
Oh yes—and they aren’t subtle about it. In Ubud, sunglasses and phones become currency in a snack-for-surrender exchange.
It’s less about theft, more about control. They don’t just snatch—they negotiate. This is psychological warfare in fur.
Because they’re organized, fearless, and always in charge. In this forest, humans follow their rules—or pay up in peanuts.
The Heist
My sunglasses survived about three minutes in Ubud’s Sacred Monkey Forest. A macaque slid them off my face like he’d done it a thousand times, hopped onto a mossy wall, and waited.
His monkey partner in crime swaggered over to me and looked me up and down like a TSA agent. We both understood the exchange rate: chocolate for sunglasses. It felt less like wildlife and more like a cartel payoff, the kind of quiet transaction where no one raises their voice because everyone knows the rules. And that’s the lesson: in Bali, especially in this so-called sacred forest, the monkeys aren’t the entertainment. We are.
After that first shakedown, I started noticing the pattern everywhere. It was a classic bait-and-switch. Phones, purses, cigarettes, even passports—all snatched and dangled until the ransom was presented. It was a carefully orchestrated heist. The monkeys steal, negotiate, and always have the upper hand. It’s less jungle law, more boardroom psychology.
The genius isn’t in the theft itself. It’s in the power. The monkeys don’t care about your Ray-Bans or your vape pen. They care that you care. They understand value the way cartels and corporations do: by holding hostage the thing you can’t bear to lose. And like every empire, they’ve refined the art of getting what they want. And they’re damn good at it, too. The kind of good that makes you wonder who’s really the evolved one here.
Influencers, Meet Your Match
Meanwhile, tourists come armed with selfie sticks and curated poses. Bali markets itself as a retreat, a place to heal and “align,” but the Sacred Monkey Forest doesn’t participate in that script. Here, your downward dog and ring light have no jurisdiction. A macaque walks straight into the shot, takes whatever you’re using to stage the moment—phone, sunglasses, patience—and ends the scene.
They’re not here to entertain; they’re here to collect. You’re on their block. We want the picture; they want the snack. If we’re honest, we’re using each other.
The Enforcement Wing
The “mafia” part hits when you see how organized they are. It isn’t chaos. It’s a crew with jobs. Lookouts on the statues. Runners who grab. Negotiators who hover until you flash a snack. Muscle that arrives if you don’t. My friend once tried to take back her bug spray from a baby monkey. The baby screamed, and out of nowhere, Big Daddy came running—fast, territorial, built like a bouncer. The hierarchy could not be clearer.
Outside Ubud, the playbook expands. In Uluwatu, gangs of macaques roam hotel rooftops, testing windows and balconies. On the beach, I saw one stalk a woman until she escaped into the ocean. Another plucked a lit cigarette straight out of a man’s mouth.
Breakfast at our villa was constant warfare until our host lent us his solution: a wooden slingshot. We never fired it, but flashing it like a badge worked every time. The monkeys scattered. For a minute, we felt powerful. The feeling didn’t last. They didn’t respect us—they respected the prop.
The Optics of Power
That’s what stayed with me. The slingshot didn’t give us control, but it did give us the illusion of it. Power here runs on optics, not muscle. The same way badges, titles, or blue lights in a rearview mirror do.
What scared the monkeys wasn’t force, but the suggestion of force. The bluff was enough. It was a perfect mirror—a reminder of how much human authority depends on props and perception. A thing in your hand can feel like power… until it doesn’t.
The Exit Toll
I left Ubud with my sunglasses, my passport, and a corrected sense of rank. The forest isn’t a movie set or influencer backdrop. It doesn’t care about your captions or hashtags. It runs on territory and a snack-for-hostage economy. Peanuts for phones. Crackers for shades.
You leave with your things, but not your illusion. In Ubud’s Sacred Monkey Forest, the hierarchy is simple: the monkeys run the place. We just pay the toll and pass through.
More by this author
The Wrap
- Bali’s Sacred Monkey Forest flips the script—tourists aren't just visitors; they’re easy targets in a monkey-run game.
- These macaques don’t act randomly. They form crews, assign roles, and strike with strategic precision.
- Influencers hoping for zen selfies are quickly humbled by banana-motivated bandits who crash content and leave chaos behind.
- Even items like sunglasses, perfumes, and passports become leverage for monkey negotiations.
- A simple slingshot holds more symbolic power than aggression, showing how fear—even among primates—operates through optics.
