Kidding. This is just the latest edition to my Monk Shot! category of posts, but since I’ve done both cute kitten and cute puppy posts this week already I’d thought I’d continue with my new Mr. Rogers persona. While any monk is a good monk to photograph in my book, I’m often drawn more to baby monks and ancient ones. But I don’t know if the baby monks should really be considered monks. First because they are not, they are novices. And second because their saffron robs are more the SE Asian version of the uniform worn at parochial schools in the States. Though I don’t believe the SE Asian version is responsible for quite as many sexual fantasies; I doubt if being a novice monk is as rife with the danger for abuse as is being an altar boy.

I took these photos in Luang Prabang, a town overflowing with baby monks. Most are students at any one of the hundreds of local wats. And most seem to spend as much time gathered with friends doing what kids do the world over as they do practicing to be little Buddhas. Even in uniform, they still manage to show their own unique personalty – whaddya want to bet that kid with the jazzy yellow hat is the cool one in his class?

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