Monks Have Birthday Parties, Too

Just when I thought being a monk had enough perks already, there was one perk that I did not know existed. On Saturday night I went to a monk’s birthday party, and it was not just any monk. The monk whose birthday it was, is the president of the largest wat that I have seen so far in Thailand. This wat has a bright blue roof with gold painted walls and is just 3 km (2 miles) away from the school. The birthday party had games, cheap food, and when I went up to the wat there were over 10,000 people there; this included farmers, hill tribe people, and locals. This occasion brought everyone together for a two-night event, although I was only there for the first night, if I had wanted to I could have slept at the wat as many people were planning on doing. I arrived where everyone was congregating and saw a structure that had thousands of 20 and 100 baht bills attached to it. I do not know what they planned on doing with all the money but on the second night there was going to be free food for everyone and a concert - the money had to go towards paying for something. I walked around, taking in the atmosphere, and stopped to watch some hill tribe men dance; this was more like fighting each other without ever hitting each other, all to the beat of drums. As I watched the dancing, a fireworks show went off just overhead. I was standing so close to the fireworks that sparks were falling less than 50 feet way, and not once did it cross my mind that this could be somewhat dangerous because I was too caught up in the moment; besides there were sparks that were landing right next to people. After the ten minute fireworks show I was able to get a view of the monk whose birthday I was celebrating because he was being carried high in the air on a large chair with bodyguards and hundreds of people gathered around that came to see him. He was throwing something to the crowd, but I was not able to get a clear picture of what it was, either way he was a very popular person. Though the party had not died down one bit I started back down the hill to the car, but not before I played the dart and balloon game. I was given eight darts for 20 baht ($0.50), but when I finally threw all the darts I had only popped three balloons, though even popping three balloons rewarded me with a writing pen for a prize. If this monk’s birthday is the largest birthday party I have ever attended, and he is just the head monk of the small town of Mae Tang, I wonder what the birthday party for the head monk of Chiang mai or Bangkok would be like!