A Monkey Robbery at the Military Beach in Thailand 🐒🍟
Our travels around Thailand continue, and today our whole family went to the Military Beach.
Why it has such a name I’ll explain in the next post — the story behind it is quite interesting.
When leaving the house, I took all my photography gear with me. Just in case.
There’s always a small hope that somewhere along the way you’ll stumble upon a frame worth capturing — and this time that hope paid off.
The drive to the beach took about an hour. When we arrived, we spread a blanket under a tree and settled down to relax. The tide was a little low, and after a short swim in the sea I lay there looking at the horizon, wondering what I could photograph.
Nothing particularly inspiring came to mind.
So I decided to use my wife as a model and started experimenting with different angles and camera settings. I already imagined how in the evening I would sit down and write a calm post about this beautiful beach.
But the day had its own plans.
A Gang Appears
Suddenly I heard children shouting somewhere nearby. They were pointing at a tree.
I grabbed my camera and ran over — already happy that I might have found a new “model”. And I wasn’t wrong.
A small gang of monkeys had appeared out of nowhere.
They moved through the branches with incredible speed, clearly feeling like the real owners of this place. I managed to take a few shots while they jumped between the trees and watched the people on the beach with great curiosity.

But the real show began a moment later.
The Bold Thief
From the other side of the beach came new shouts. One particularly bold monkey had already descended from the trees and was calmly walking among the отдыхающие as if she paid for the entrance ticket.

A few minutes later she spotted a plastic bag filled with fruit.
With one quick and perfectly precise movement she tore the bag open and started pulling the fruit out, completely ignoring the crowd of surprised people around her.

Then a woman nearby suddenly shouted — the monkey had grabbed her bag.
Within seconds the little bandit ripped open the packages and began stuffing food into her mouth with impressive speed.

The woman tried to take the bag back, but the monkey showed such an intimidating grin that she immediately reconsidered the idea. Instead, she pulled out her phone and started filming the robbery.

Probably the safest decision.
Chips Were the Favorite
Out of everything inside the stolen bag, the monkey seemed to enjoy the chips the most.
She calmly sat down right there on the sand and continued eating as if nothing unusual was happening. Around her, a small crowd had already gathered — people with phones trying to capture the scene.
But the thief didn’t care at all.
She just kept eating.
Plans Change
These cheeky monkeys completely disrupted the order of posts I originally planned.
But honestly, I’m glad it happened.
It’s always much more interesting to photograph animals in their natural environment, where they behave freely, rather than somewhere in a zoo behind glass.
And moments like this are exactly why I always carry my camera with me.
Hope you enjoyed these bold little bandits as much as I did.
Thank you for your likes, your comments, and your time. It never goes unnoticed.

I write my texts myself, correct mistakes and translate via ChatGPT (which is not a violation on Hive)! All photos were taken by me personally - I am a beginner photographer, so I ask professionals not to judge strictly.
Thank you for sharing these moments with me! Until new stories and new holidays! ✌️.
Camera 📷: Sony Alpha 7 IV full-frame
Lens 🔭: Sony FE 70-200mm F: 2.8 GM OSS II
Lens 🔭: Sony FE 90mm F2.8 Macro G OSS
Lens 🔭: Sony FE 24–70mm f/2.8 GM II
Processed 🛠: Lightroom

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Today, for the first time in a long while, I published through #ecency, and things didn’t go exactly the way I wanted — I still have quite a few questions.
The photos on #ecency didn't load at all after publishing - even though everything was fine in the editor!
Thanks for trying out and reporting issue. Looks like there is simple image link detection bug. We are fixing it now asap.
Thank you - I hope everything works out for you. 👍
Problem is fixed and cache cleaned
Thank you! The photos appeared, but they lost color and exposure. The AVIF got messed up, even though everything looked fine in the editor.
On peakd.com, the files were automatically re-encoded to HEIF. Although it lost a bit of dynamic range, it’s still much better than JPG photos.
Here is the comparison:
If you manage to make AVIF fully preserve the data, it would actually be even better than HEIF.
Right now I’ll try to make another test post. I noticed that on ecency.com, when trying to upload an AVIF photo, it gets re-encoded to HEIF. If it works like that, it’s better than JPG, but still worse than a full AVIF.
Peakd loading images directly from uploaded ecency link which is bit higher in size. On Ecency we reproxy uploaded images so it loads faster, smaller in size. Because of lost in size there will be quality compression. We can check how to improve it further… do let us know how new posts goes, your uploads stay in original format/size though you can always access to download them back from your gallery.
all pictures except the last are very dark - some error obviously.
It must have been my mistake. They said I could upload AVIF files, and I made them with extended HDR. On peakd.com, my photos are bright and beautiful, unlike the last photo, which is a JPG. I didn't realize that for someone who doesn't have an HDR-capable monitor, they'll probably look dark. Although you might be right—they didn't load at all on ecency, even though everything looked fine in the editor.
Everything seems to be ok on my phone - I just can't figure out if they have HDR or not.

ecency.com responded:
I used to love monkeys as I find them cute, but I know how cheeky and aggressive they are, so I'd stay away from them and protect myself and my belongings too.
It's not save to travel in the Philippines, because it's easy to end up in prison without having committed any crime. This is because corruption in the country remains widespread and here is its history: [Philippine's human rights violations] The Marcos Dynasty 3/239
Это же организованные преступные группировки!🐵
At least they’re not beating me — that’s already good! 😄