Welcome to the server!
You can start out getting yourself a sewing kit and tracking down spider silk to make raw silk armor. It's not great, but it's light and free. If you find yourself hunting in Guk the frogs there drop some more light armor (netted and mesh). It isn't better than raw silk iirc, but the hands are magic, so you can then use H2H against magic mobs if you're so inclined.
Really your first priority should be good weapons rather than good armor. Monks have a bit of a glut in terms of weapons available to them so you can get some pretty good ones for fairly cheap. Save up for that!
Another great investment would be platinum or velium +hp +ac rings. Fantastic for low level characters of any class.
Edit: make sure to check out the wiki often. The page for monks has some useful info on there including useful quests and gear you can aim towards getting later on:
http://wiki.project1999.com/Monk