Woman attacked by monkeys after trying to conquer fear of monkeys

When a British woman went to a Thai nature resort to overcome her fear of monkeys, she was viciously attacked by a pack of macaques.

The father of Dee Darwell, 56, from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, UK raised a chimpanzee that she said was "positively evil". She has feared monkeys ever since being around her father's chimp. Mrs. Darwell was on holiday in Thailand with a friend who had talked her into going on a Siam Sea Canoe tour to confront her fear of monkeys. She was then attacked on Monkey Island near the popular vacation destination island of Phuket in southern Thailand. Darwell told Sky News: "I thought I was heading for safety under this rock in the shade, only to cool down. I laid the towel down and there were no monkeys in sight.

""The next thing I noticed, this monkey walked up next to me and I thought, 'oh dear', and I began to stand up to move away.

"Then, the monkey took my wrist and pounced on my right arm, sinking his teeth in and hung off it.

"He wouldn't let go; he was locked on. I was absolutely petrified." More macaques joined in the attack, surrounding her and biting her arms and body. She said: "I thought, this is it, I'm going to die, I'm going to be savaged by these monkeys - then I went into shock." After she lost consciousness, she still had many of the monkeys hanging from her limbs while she lay collapsed and bleeding profusely from a "deep, deep hole" in her arm. Thai fishermen finally rescued her, prying the monkeys off of her, and she was taken to Bangkok Phuket Hospital. "I wouldn't have got off that bloody boat if the tour guide would have said at all that there was any danger, any risk, even the slightest risk," Mrs. Darwell said. Tour leader Mr Yongyut Buasod said: "We can't control the monkeys if they decide to bite someone, that's why we always warn the tourists.

"That day some people were teasing the monkeys. They don't necessarily attack the specific person teasing them."