Monks!

Just loved the novice monks of Laos. Totally gorgeous set of dudes. Let me show you a collection of photos of them so you know what I mean:

Tong we already know.
See post below.

Monks on the Mekong.

Cyberspace monks!

Fast-breaking monks!

Mini-skirt monk!


Cool dude monk!

At this wat, I missed the fabulous photo op of the elderly abbot in the "death metal" beanie.

Tourist monk!

And here are the photos I took of Tak Bat ...

Tak Bat is the
collection-of-offerings
at dawn.

This is the only food the monks have all day (although do check out the photo above). What happens is that every dawn the monks go out with their food bowls and collect their meal off the community.

Collecting breakfast.

It is meant to be a sacred ceremony however tourists have recently turned it into a horror-show:

Hordes of tourists
annoying the monks!

These tourists jump into the line and try to have their photos taken with the monks, all v-fingers, pushing and hassling! Ruth said disturbing Tak Bat this way is the equivalent of racing up to the church altar during mass and asking the priest to pose with you which we all know is just so unbelievably and downright rude and offensive it would never ever happen.

And yet we do it here!

There are posters all over town asking you to leave the monks alone during Tak Bat ...

Poster!

But still it goes on!

In fact, Tak Bat has become such a horror show the infuriated abbots are now building new seminaries out of town so to avoid this type of thing happening in the future, which begs the question of how these poor and elderly "offerers" are going to be able to afford a dawn trip out of town everyday to feed our guys!

Don't you wish tourists weren't always so downright vile!