Today was an early morning. We went to a ceremony for a man entering the Monkhood. Not permanently, just for
about 2 weeks. It’s a right of
passage for young men to do this either when they are going to get married, make
a big change/re-dedicate their lives, moving away for school, etc. This particular man will be starting
his MBA in England in the fall, and this was part of his reason. Anyway, entering into the Monkhood is a
very serious thing, and is begun with a ritual ceremony filled with
celebration. There is a part with
the man thanking his parents for raising him, washing their feet, them washing
him (along with grandparents and the monk leading the ceremony), changing into
white clothing, walking around the temple 3 times with your family and friends,
throwing coins wrapped in ribbons, then changing into the burnt orange garment
(after vows are spoken), and then the family eats (which as you will see is an
entirely different experience in itself).
It was really cool to be there and to watch, I’m going to have to start
Googling stuff to figure out meanings and such. There are several rules that
they must follow and the number of rules is shown by the color of their
clothing, the darker orange means more rules. Two of them are 1) No touching or
being touched by women and 2) only eating at 5am and Noon (he didn’t get to eat
any of the food at the celebration afterwards, and actually wasn’t there except
for a pass through to take pictures and say goodbye to his family).
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| Washing his parents' feet. |
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| Getting washed. This monk seemed to take joy and kept dumping more and more water on him. And it looked pretty cold. |
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| Walking around the temple |
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| Throwing out the money |
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| Family gifts
for the monastery. No there isn't any significance in the gifts, they're
always really practical. It's part of the celebration of having a son
admitted into the Monkhood. |
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| Making his vows |
Side
note: While the family walked around the temple, we walked over to the
doors of the temple. And this is where we saw the cutest little boy. He
was crouched down looking at this small caterpillar-ish bug. And all of a
sudden he stood up and stomped on it. And kept stomping on it. This
furor of killing a bug seemed really ironic outside of a Buddhist
temple.
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| A little less zen outside of the temple |
The food after was quite the affair. I don’t think any of us
anticipated this much food! Most of it was good, but not all, and we made sure
to take pictures of everything. A
member of the Monk’s family insisted that this girl (probably in her mid to
late 20s and her mom sit with us because the girl spoke English from attending
the University of Michigan for her PhD in Engineering). They were great, even
her mom spoke some English (I think more than she let on). She helped explain
what everything was and how to eat it.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:
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| This is our table before we sat down. Notice the Sprite and Pepsi bottles. |
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| We think we're
almost done with the meal, so we thought we'd better get a picture. I
think this was around the 4th or 5th course... |
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| Our friends Tanawan and Kornsiri. They were great to sit with during the meal |
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| Pre-appatizer? Puffed chips and peanuts (with chop sticks, which aren't supper common in Thailand). |
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| Appatizer? Top
right and clockwise: Thai hot dogs with ketchup, sliced ginger
(pickled), pineapple, fake crab, Fermented eggs (direct translation:
Horse urine eggs, also the ONLY think I didn't try), Center: pork/shrimp
rapped in kanomgeep (flower of some sort). |
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| This was kind
of like a coleslaw. Contents: mango, peanut, carrot, little crispy fish,
pork sausage, lettuce, some sort of sauce. |
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| Foreground: Duck, Background: Shark-fin soup (actually came out before the coleslaw stuff, and it was terrible!) |
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| Shrimps, I even tried sucking the head (as I was directed, and I will never do that again) |
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| Sea Bass, if
fish always tasted like this, I could eat a ton of it. Apparently (and
I've always suspected) fish tastes best when it's supper fresh and
doesn't taste fishy (who knew :P). SO GOOD! |
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| By this point
you're probably thinking, we're done right? I'm mean that was 3
different types of protein. But you're wrong. Next came more soup (by
this point we're on the 8th course). Those floating things are from a
bamboo plant. Couldn't actually get the name of it from anyone. |
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| Fruit that
they brought especially for us. The orange-ish things are salat, then
grapes up in the top. the clear ones are longgong, apples and the red
lynchee. |
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| The obligatory fried rice with pork that has been dried and shredded on the top (surprisingly good). |
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| Dessert which
was sticky rice, sugar, dates and coypeck (yellow things that are
supposed to give you a long life). When we were done and old man came up
and started picking them out and eating them. It was really funny. |
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| The newly admitted monk |
After that Cathy’s brother-in-law took us to the weekend
market (Chatuchank Market). It was crazy busy and really hot. We kept being
warned about pick-pocketers and how it wasn’t safe, to be careful with our
money, etc. We didn’t have any problems. We did get to see some crazy stuff
though. It was an extremely hot
and humid day and it was really miserable to be out in the sun, and the parts
that were covered were often just as bad because people were cooking food to
sell so there was heat radiating from that too. I’m not sure how they manage it. I suppose if that’s all you’re used to. We started wandering around the covered
part, and ended up in the animal section. It started out with cute puppies, and
then steadily when down hill. Thankfully it didn’t smell too badly, but booths
after booths of caged animals got old really quickly. And we couldn’t find our
way out. They were selling
everything: fish, dogs, bunnies, squirrels, rodents, etc. Some of the squires
weren’t even caged, just leashed up. That was odd. At one point we did find our way out, and decided that we
needed to cool down; We found a place that was enclosed with air conditioning.
It was a restaurant so we stopped to get drinks. I got mango juice, which is
probably more detail than you care about, but it was really good mango juice.
Mostly because it was cold, but it tasted really good also. We shopped around for a while and bartered
a bit. After only a few hours though, we were done.
