I can’t even remember when I started to watch Monkey Doo and how I started to watch. It probably came to me as a random recommendation since I love to watch animals–big cats of Africa, little cats going to vets, lemurs of Madagascar etc. I have to say once I started with Doo, I can’t stop watching.
Monkey Doo lives an idyllic life in Vietnam with his human parents and his human brother. His life is carefully chronicled by his human mother and promptly uploaded to YouTube. He wears clothes like a human baby, eats exotic fruits, climbs trees, clings to his human father whenever he can, plays with the family cat and the neighborly dogs.
One thing that really attracts me is their frequent family outings, especially to an orchard or a wooded area nearby for bananas, papayas, dragon fruits (which sell for $6.5 each in supermarkets here in New Jersey), rose apples and other exotic fruits that slip my mind for the moment. I can’t have enough of these videos. I grew up in the north in an arid plain very close to Mongolia, but my mother grew up in a subtropical area. She would tell me stories of walking on a path picking lychee, olive, longan, oranges off branches. Once heard about this, I couldn’t shake off this image and imagined myself sitting somewhere and all these exotic fruits just drop into my mouth. That’s exactly what Monkey Doo did in his videos–he climbs up a tree and viola a plump fruit, pomelo being one, is too big for his little hands to hold.
Often the videos only have Vietnamese sound track with no English subtitles, but that’s no hindrance at all for the enjoyment. One can easily guess what’s happening in Doo’s family, which seems to be located away from the noise of big city. The area is rural or probably small town since it has KFC. Doo is doing things for which no verbal explanations are needed–he is playing with people around him, he is climbing here and there, he is brushing his teeth, he is waiting his human dad to spoon feed him some tasty treats. I didn’t know that monkeys cannot use spoons. I thought they can since in other monkey videos, monkeys can eat with spoons, though they hold spoon in a funny way and prefer licking the spoon rather than using the spoon to shove food in. Doo is actually observant of human etiquette, at least partially, and in many ways considers himself a human being. This is illustrated by his patience at the table, waiting for the food to go to his mother and his brother first.
I often wonder about Monkey Doo videos’ attractions. Comparing with other videos which have traveling, food sampling, African cats, extreme eating, Monkey Doo videos are really simple–no far away locations in different continents, no deliberate seeking of exotic customs, no fierce actions of safaris. It is only everyday life of a nice, loving family. I have to say these videos have touched me, even if I can’t explain why, more than those more complicated videos. One of my friends used to say, “if you love it, you love it. Why do you want to know the reason?”
Haoyan Do 