Monk-eying Around

Pardon the bad pun.

Monks are everywhere in Thailand. This is not unusual of course seeing as ninety percent of the population is Buddhist making Thailand the largest Buddhist population in the world. Monks dress in orange robes of varying shades-almost neon coloured to more of a brown hue, they have shaved heads and eyebrows and all of them are, of course, male. You get nuns in Thailand but they’re less prominent. However, they too have their heads shaved but wear white instead of orange. I had not been acquainted with any until one fell asleep on me during in the back of a pickup truck. Long (and awkward) story.

Back to monks. We volunteers had all been invited on another English camp in Nakhon Sawan by a previous volunteer who has moved back to Thailand after university. This time we’d be teaching high-school aged novice monks. We were all slightly nervous, the girls especially as women aren’t allowed to touch or make physical contact with monks or even pass them things. If we wanted to hand out sheets we’d have to put them down and hope they’d pick them up. Even though I don’t go around touching monks (or any random people actually) I found myself being extra aware of monk-proximities. Even after the camp was over I kept automatically flinching away from men walking past in the street. I probably looked mental. Anyway, we were split into pairs and given a topic to teach Chess (Francesca) and I taught fruit all day to different groups of monks. We played the game ‘Fruit Salad’ and watching robed, religious young men run around fighting each other for chairs so they didn’t have to say ‘apple’ in front of everyone was a lot of fun. Weirdly you get lady boy monks which are an even stranger sight- watching monks mince up and down with false eyelashes on and saying ‘strawberry’ in the campest voice ever.

When the day was over, we all got given certificates and presents. Which all turned out to be the same. A towel. Hope they weren’t hinting at anything. Afterwards we hit the streets of Nakhon Sawan for my second New Year of the New Year. This time it was Chinese New Year and as Nakhon Sawan has a large Chinese population we saw parades of floats with Chinese dancing and music playing, there were fireworks and firecrackers and the streets glowed red with the hundreds of lanterns that had been strung across them. We saw a show with fire breathing creatures that could change their faces with a flick of the head and naturally the famous Chinese dragons.

This weekend has been a lot different as we travelled to the next village where some more volunteers are posted. Though their village is much tinier than ours, they have a spa! Which you can use for free! You have to sign some forms (they wanted my parents names’ for some bizarre reason) and give your blood pressure and are supposed to make a donation but apart from that we had a free afternoon going in and out of the steam room. Ah, bliss!

Sawat Dee Ka!

And Happy New Year. Again.