A Village Walk

Visit any Thai home and you will usually find a calendar hanging somewhere. On that calendar, one day each week of every month is marked with a small red Buddha stamp.

Following the lunar cycle, these marks coincide with the full moon, the new moon, the first quarter waxing moon, and the third quarter waning moon. These are Buddhist holy days - the Christian equivalent of Sunday.

Buddha days are when laypeople follow the five precepts more closely: abstaining from harming living beings, fraudulent behavior, sex, lying, and intoxicants. Ordained monks, incidentally, follow 227 precepts.

In our village, many wake early to cook for the monks and bring food to the forest temple deep in the jungle. There is a brief service of prayers and chanting. Afterward, we join together for a meal.

The monks are served first. Each dish is placed on small wooden wheeled trays and slid to them as they fill their bowls. The trays then move to the nuns. Once the last nun has prepared her plate, the dishes are transferred, one by one, to a larger table. Before we prepare our plates, there is another short prayer and chanting.

Then it's kin khaw (phonetically "keen kow"), eat rice.

Once the meal is finished, one or more monks will sit and invite discussion.