10/des 1 day with a cambodian monk
I woke up with any special plan in my head. Nights can be noisy around Khao san road, but nothing really terrible. It only makes me wake up a little bit later. I started walking towards sanam luang, an area close to my place, with another market, universities, and a buddhist university. But before doing anything, a big natural orange juice!! The market, is full of buddha statues, images, and religious things, and very busy as well. I got into a wat right next to the market, and after 30 seconds, I heard: what's your name? This time was a buddhist monk. A 23 years old guy from cambodia, that became monk after being novice for a long time, and temple boy before. He just moved to bangkok 1 year ago to study buddhist psicology. And this random (I think that means something that non decided, aleatory...) decision, changed totally my day, and make it quite especial. He could speak english enough to comunicate about certain kind of things, but not enough for many other. So sometimes, english become a kind of limit.
We spoke, in the wat, about cambodia, and catalunya, about our ages, and what we have done, and what we would like to reach in the future. He seemed to apreciate my positives comments about him, or buddhism (even if I still don't know nothing about) a lot, almost feeling bad. And we went on for one hour, under the biggest tree of the wat. Another monk was with us, but he was keeping a 2 meters distance. After that he told me that he wanted me to take me to his own wat, were he's living, and present me his 'master', the oldest monk of the wat. And that place was 1 hour far from bangkok. He wanted to pay all the transport for me, bus, and motorbikes. Monks don't need to pay public buses, and they have the first seat reserved. On our way there, we spoke a little bit about his religion, and the absence of mine. Before getting into the bus, of course, he prepared all his clothes, in the thai way. Monks here are wearing orange or dark brown clothes, and you can know were are they from depending in their way to fix it. He showed me both ways, cambodian and thai. I think that they are extremelly elegant, and respectful. Once in his wat, we sat down on a big room, with 5 main big chairs, and made me seaat in the middle. He sat on my left side, and after 5 minutes, the old monk sat on my right side. He could not speak any english at all, but trough kosal, we menaged to talk about were I was coming from, and about the wat. They offered me water with ice, and regarding the situation, and how special it was for me, I accepted, even if it's known that is always better to avoid ice in asia. Fortunately nothing happened. I would say that big cities have no big problems with the water, but you never know were it is coming from. Once in his room, a very basic space, shared with another monk, with no windows, and as a bed a flat hard surface with a carpet on it. Book, pictures, water, and music. And that surprised me because one of the group was something like new kids of the block. Another thing that surprised me, was that while talking, a mobile phone sounded, and he took a it away from the orange clothes!! That was funny. It was a friend of him from cambodia, and he wanted to talk to me. And so we did, for 5 minutes. He made me promise that I'll visit him when I'll go to cambodia.
He showed me all his pictures about friends, family... and I understood that he has no mum, and probably no dad, but he had godfathers, and godmothers, and even godbrothers. I guess that thiese was the people that took care of him. He told me that his future plans pass from learning english properly, and travel to myanmar and india, to learn more about buddhism, and if possible, became a teacher. More or less like my plans, even if my plans are less clear for the moment.
The way back to bangkok was a little bit longer. There was no space to seat together on the bus, so I stood. And there was a lot of traffic. He told me that monks has special seats because they are suposed to try to meditate everywhere, and get away from the noises. We had dinner together, I wanted to invite him, as I was grateful and happy about the day we spent together. He was also happy and excited, but told me that they can only eat twice a day, once in the early morning, and then at lunch time. I was also told to seat first in the terrace, and that he would come one minute later. It's a way to show respect to buddhism. It's not well seen that a western is walking with a monk, and still worst if a western seats in the same table. But in that way was allright. The owner of the terrace, offered him a pepsi cola. He also told me that the proper way to say hello to a monk is puting the hands together in front of the brest, and looking down.
He told me to remember him, and to write to him. That we had to stay in touch, because he liked me a lot. That surprised me a lot, but I'm going to stay in contact because he seems a very interesting person. Coming from 2 very different places, cultures, societies, we have very similar ways of seeing things.
After that, I went back to the guest house, and met a girl from switzerland, from zurich. Ana. He had been traveling quite a lot, and seemed pretty informed about everything. But there was something in her that I didn't like that much. She was complaining quite a lot. I couldn't avoid thinking in ljiljana, also because her family is from the old iugoslavia, on this case from serbia.
I spent the rest of the evening reading, writing, and crossing smiles with people, with nice feelings. I was a very complete day, and totally unexpected. That was what I was expecting!!!
We spoke, in the wat, about cambodia, and catalunya, about our ages, and what we have done, and what we would like to reach in the future. He seemed to apreciate my positives comments about him, or buddhism (even if I still don't know nothing about) a lot, almost feeling bad. And we went on for one hour, under the biggest tree of the wat. Another monk was with us, but he was keeping a 2 meters distance. After that he told me that he wanted me to take me to his own wat, were he's living, and present me his 'master', the oldest monk of the wat. And that place was 1 hour far from bangkok. He wanted to pay all the transport for me, bus, and motorbikes. Monks don't need to pay public buses, and they have the first seat reserved. On our way there, we spoke a little bit about his religion, and the absence of mine. Before getting into the bus, of course, he prepared all his clothes, in the thai way. Monks here are wearing orange or dark brown clothes, and you can know were are they from depending in their way to fix it. He showed me both ways, cambodian and thai. I think that they are extremelly elegant, and respectful. Once in his wat, we sat down on a big room, with 5 main big chairs, and made me seaat in the middle. He sat on my left side, and after 5 minutes, the old monk sat on my right side. He could not speak any english at all, but trough kosal, we menaged to talk about were I was coming from, and about the wat. They offered me water with ice, and regarding the situation, and how special it was for me, I accepted, even if it's known that is always better to avoid ice in asia. Fortunately nothing happened. I would say that big cities have no big problems with the water, but you never know were it is coming from. Once in his room, a very basic space, shared with another monk, with no windows, and as a bed a flat hard surface with a carpet on it. Book, pictures, water, and music. And that surprised me because one of the group was something like new kids of the block. Another thing that surprised me, was that while talking, a mobile phone sounded, and he took a it away from the orange clothes!! That was funny. It was a friend of him from cambodia, and he wanted to talk to me. And so we did, for 5 minutes. He made me promise that I'll visit him when I'll go to cambodia.
He showed me all his pictures about friends, family... and I understood that he has no mum, and probably no dad, but he had godfathers, and godmothers, and even godbrothers. I guess that thiese was the people that took care of him. He told me that his future plans pass from learning english properly, and travel to myanmar and india, to learn more about buddhism, and if possible, became a teacher. More or less like my plans, even if my plans are less clear for the moment.
The way back to bangkok was a little bit longer. There was no space to seat together on the bus, so I stood. And there was a lot of traffic. He told me that monks has special seats because they are suposed to try to meditate everywhere, and get away from the noises. We had dinner together, I wanted to invite him, as I was grateful and happy about the day we spent together. He was also happy and excited, but told me that they can only eat twice a day, once in the early morning, and then at lunch time. I was also told to seat first in the terrace, and that he would come one minute later. It's a way to show respect to buddhism. It's not well seen that a western is walking with a monk, and still worst if a western seats in the same table. But in that way was allright. The owner of the terrace, offered him a pepsi cola. He also told me that the proper way to say hello to a monk is puting the hands together in front of the brest, and looking down.
He told me to remember him, and to write to him. That we had to stay in touch, because he liked me a lot. That surprised me a lot, but I'm going to stay in contact because he seems a very interesting person. Coming from 2 very different places, cultures, societies, we have very similar ways of seeing things.
After that, I went back to the guest house, and met a girl from switzerland, from zurich. Ana. He had been traveling quite a lot, and seemed pretty informed about everything. But there was something in her that I didn't like that much. She was complaining quite a lot. I couldn't avoid thinking in ljiljana, also because her family is from the old iugoslavia, on this case from serbia.
I spent the rest of the evening reading, writing, and crossing smiles with people, with nice feelings. I was a very complete day, and totally unexpected. That was what I was expecting!!!
posted by Unknown at 13:25
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