A group of foreign tourists on Koh Chang island in Trat province reported to a police officer that a monkey had stolen their motorcycle key. However, after a four-hour search, the key was eventually found at their accommodation.
The Thai police officer shared the story on his Facebook account, drawing over 18,000 reactions and nearly 900 comments and shares. In his caption, the officer jokingly wrote that as an investigator, he had gone up a mountain with the foreigners and searched for four hours, only to discover that the foreigners had been smoking cannabis and had forgotten the key at their accommodation. The officer quipped that the monkey should file a defamation complaint against the foreigners.
The post prompted joking reactions from Thai social media users, with comments suggesting the foreigners be arrested for using cannabis, questioning whether the monkeys needed a lawyer, and noting that the foreigners had wasted the time of both the police and the monkeys.
While this incident was ultimately a false alarm, there have been other cases of monkeys causing real chaos in Thailand. In March 2022, a monkey in Phuket snatched a French woman’s mobile phone and was seen filming itself on the device. In another incident in December 2022, park rangers in Sisaket province launched a search after a monkey grabbed a tourist’s tote bag containing 50,000 baht and threw it down a cliff.