A woman named Angela Chua encountered a very cheeky macaque while visiting MacRitchie Reservoir.

According to her Facebook post on March 2, 2019, Chua was photographing a troop of macaques with her camera when she felt her mobile phone being sneakily pulled out of her back pocket.

The offending monkey then climbed up a nearby tree, and reportedly attempted to eat the device.

Bystanders tried to give advice

People around Chua tried giving her advice on how to retrieve her phone.

One suggested for Chua to call her phone, perhaps hoping the vibrations would startle the macaque into dropping it, to which another person responded "she no phone already".

When someone passed Chua their own phone, Chua also mentioned that her phone was on silent mode, and would not vibrate anyway.

Macaque dropped phone into the water

However, the macaque subsequently ditched the phone — straight into the reservoir waters, no less.

Chua then passed her tote bag to a bystander and declared that she was going into the water body to rescue her phone.

Fortunately, the waist-deep water was clear enough for Chua to locate and retrieve her phone, which had sunk to the bottom.

After being helped out of the water, Chua received a confusing list of advice from well-meaning bystanders on how to salvage her drenched phone:

Put in a bowl of rice.

Shake.

Don't shake.

Turn it off.

Don't turn it off, off sure cannot on again.

Chua left feeling very much bewildered.

She did however, choose to submerge her phone in a bowl of rice, as seen from a photo she uploaded along with her post:

More advice from commenters

In the comments section of her post, numerous people also attempted to advise Chua on how to save her phone:

One commenter was much less optimistic on the survival of Chua's phone:

Kinship

Others lamented about their own experiences with the mischievous macaques:

Monkeying around

If you're curious, here are some of the photos Chua took on the day she was robbed, showing the monkeys doing monkey-related things:

Dos and don'ts

Singaporeans might be familiar with the native long-tailed macaques found at nature reserves.

However, rapid urbanisation has made human-monkey encounters increasingly common as the animals venture out of their forested homes.

According to NParks, visitors to nature areas should take note not to feed the macaques, as it might reduce their natural inclination to forage in the forests.

NParks has a list of instructions on how to be a responsible visitor to nature reserves, and what to do when you encounter a macaque in the open.

Here are some tips if you find yourself in a similar situation to Chua:

• Remain calm and quiet.
• Do not make sudden movements.
• Do not maintain eye contact with the monkeys.
• Conceal all food and plastic bags.
• Do not try to hit the monkey.
• Look away and back off slowly.
• Keep away from the area until the monkeys have left.

You can read Chua's Facebook post in its entirety below:

All photos from Angela Chua/Facebook