What a Careless Slip

Walking to the hotel lift, Isabel was quietly listing in her mind down whether she left everything in order before leaving for a shop down the Ferringhi Street.

" Switches off, door closed and locked properly, balcony door...," she paused mid step.

" Wait... Did I close the balcony door?" She said aloud and laughed at her newly developed habit of talking to herself as if she were an octogenarian. And still giggling, she realised that she didn’t remember!

“Oh well,” she sighed and turned on her heels back to the room.

Bang! Shutting the balcony door with a satisfying slam, she then walked out of her room again.

Strolling along Ferringhi Street was somehow incredibly enjoyable: she didn’t mind a slowly crawling crowd, smells and noises of the most popular market street in Penang. In fact, she even stopped at a few stalls to look at trinkets and colourful bric a brac that attracted so many tourists to Batu Ferringhi. After a few hours of walking, she managed to buy a few souvenirs: key chains, pictured cards and T-shirts. Tired, she went back to the hotel.

"-Bing!-" The door of the lift opened and she walked to her room.

" Oh my God!" she stood agape by the opened door to her room. It was a total mayhem; clothes from her luggage were flung all over the floor, pillows torn and tossed to one corner, papers and food wrappers strewn on the bed.

" Seriously, who's the idiot who even dares to take a few bits of a fruit ?" She was even more infuriated when she saw the half eaten pear lying beside the fruit basket on the coffee table. Outraged by the obnoxiousness of whoever who had just broke into her room, she scanned through the mess once more.

Then she heard some movement behind the bed and saw four tiny fingers appearing on the white bed sheets followed by a pair of huge eyes staring back at her. Only now she noticed the large sign near the balcony door: WARNING! DO NOT LEAVE BALCONY DOORS OPEN: MONKEYS IN THIS AREA.

" Oh, boy! How many times do I have to remind myself to look at warning signs?!" she exclaimed. With an umbrella, she took about fifteen minutes just to shoo away the baby monkey who on the way out, was still trying to grab a banana from the coffee table.