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Feeding Time At The Wat
It’s always cool to run across a monk or two when you are visiting a temple in Thailand. It’s even better stumbling upon a whole gaggle of them. If the wat is one of those that includes a school for novice monks you can increase you chances of hitting an orgy of monks by visiting at feeding time.
I hadn’t planned my visit to Wat Phra Singh in Chiang Mai that way, I’d been out wandering from wat to wat for the day and just happened upon this saffron colored feeding frenzy by luck. One of the more important and well-known temples in the city, it has a large school attached and is one of the best to hit if you want to find large numbers of monks at a wat. Lunch time, which due to the number of mouths being fed runs in shifts, is even better. It’s also one of the few times you can point your camera at a monk and not be noticed. Their entire state of consciousness is directed toward the food being ladled out of large pots.
I’d guess from the looks of the not-so-little guy in the foreground of this shot that grabbing seconds, or even thirds, is permitted.
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I visited a place near Mandalay that is home to several schools and monasteries with something like 1000 monks. Every day at lunch they line up in a big procession to the dining room. It is a big tourist attraction. I was kind of disgusted by it because of the way it turns people into nothing but a tourist attraction for a bunch of stupid Europeans who can’t read the rules posted everywhere about how to behave. Or if they do read them, they ignore them. I took a couple of photos of the monks who were preparing the meal and cleaning up the campus. But then I got to feeling bad about it and put the camera away. I felt sorry for those guys, but I guess it helps raise some money to keep the place going. But the idiotic Russians smoking, walking in front of the monks and shoving cameras in their faces pointed out all of the things that are bad about tourism in my opinion.
I avoided the morning monk alm rounds in Luang Prabang for the same reason.
Touri who don’t understand they are not in Disneyland should really vacation there instead!