10,000 monks make merit for Tom's birthday ?

Early on the morning of Nov 27th 10,000 monks, and many more people, gathered to make merit for the health of the king on Nimmanhemin road here in Chiang Mai. This is the second year for this event and it was quite a scene! There were a lot of signs all over town advertising the gathering, and we wondered if this was an answer to some recent big Christian prayer events, promoted mainly by a Korean church group.

The signs said it would start at 6:07am so we arrived around 5:45am expecting to see a line of 10,000 monks and people lined up to "give alms". In Thailand it is a tradition to give food to monks who walk early each morning through the streets throughout the country. It is considered good Karma to provide food to monks. They collect food in their alms bowls and have breakfast and lunch from the food collected. They don't eat after the noon meal for the rest of the day. In this case some of the food was for the monks, and the rest was collected to send to the south where there are terrible floods. Much of the food was not fresh for that reason. We had intended to just watch as we did not bring food, but once we were there it was apparent that there was lots of food to buy and offer so we decided to sit down and wait for the procession. After sitting on the concrete street for 3 hours the 10,000 monks did show, and it was quite a spectacle as there were 8 lines of monks stretching the length of Nimmanhemin as well as 4 lines of people offering food, of which we were part. Not sure what the 6:07am time referred to since we had to listen to innumerable speeches and prayers and watch soldiers spread plastic bags to collect the huge amount of food. Eventually the food was offered to the monks and we all went home. At least they were armed with rolls of plastic bags and what a great use for a soldier! (Obama are you listening?) It was probably 60 degrees and you will see people look like they are dressed for a NH winter but that is how cold it feels to them.

Here are some photos: Click at the bottom of the slide with your mouse to speed up the slides.


The video that follows shows the monks procession. Watch all the different styles of robes, alms bowls and monks and people!



Here is a blog of another "gentleman" in Chiang Mai that had some good pictures too.
http://krabbyken.blogspot.com/2009/11/monks-are-coming-10000-but-whos.html