"Monkey mayhem in Bukit Timah," by Arul John. The New Paper, 12 Mar 2008.
There had to be a good reason for the monkey's mayhem. The incident happened in a residential area south of Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. A trap on loan from AVA had been set and captured an inexperienced baby monkey. A social troop like the long-tailed macaque would attempt to free the baby or agitate the captors.
Thus agitated troop vocalised and in this heightened mood, one individual entered the house.
Eventually AVA officers removed the cage and its solitary occupant, the baby monkey, which was put to sleep.
The article later lists some measures that can be adopted to make houses less attractive to these monkeys. These include reducing access by monkeys to food (including refuse), reduce motivation to enter by hiding obvious food items like fruit from open view and to provide negative feedback (spraying water) when they venture too close.
Since humans are intelligent enough to modify our behaviour quickly, the questions is, will the monkeys respond? Animals will respond to specific cues and have evolved to exploit specific environments. The long-tailed macaque is a highly adaptable and opprtunistic species able to venture out of forests edges into partially urbanised areas. As a result they will quickly adapt to the cues that we provide to deter their raids.
Likewise, visitors to our Nature Reserves are told to "Stop Feeding the Monkeys" [By N. Sivasothi, Habitatnews, 07 Jun 2005].
An interesting point was made by residents of another house - "the monkeys usually just climb into the garden and eat the fruits from the trees. They have never terrorised people before."