TRAVELING AROUND THE WORLD: Our Tales of Delights and Disasters Read Online Free PDF Page B

woman (it is one of the 227 rules). He did, however, tie Mike’s string. It was a very nice experience, although, I have to say, we were on the front row and were drenched. That little brush held lots of water.
     
    It’s an odd feeling to be a forbidden object. One of our tour guides shoved me to one side as a group of monks passed, explaining that I needed to give them plenty of room as they should not even brush up against a woman. Sure enough, I was walking along a narrow street behind two tiny Thai women who were browsing the inevitable row of vendors. Suddenly, they squished themselves to one side of the sidewalk – odd, I thought – and then I saw the oncoming monk. After he passed, far to our left, they moved over and continued browsing.
     
    We saw many ways for people to offer their offerings or pay their respects. Many times, people bring a white or pink lotus flower; others light small yellow candles or pots of burning oil. One can buy a small gold bell, write your name on the clapper, and hang it in the temple. There are also packages of materials to buy for the monks. Some contain food, a few orange marigolds, and others even toilet paper. We saw people selling bags of fish and small cages of tiny birds outside the temples, too. People buy them to set free, representing their troubles swimming or flying away.
     
    In Thailand, there is great concern about the spirit world. Each home has a small house on a pole in the backyard. It looks like an ornate bird house but it is for the spirits of ancestors. Each day, an offering of water, food, incense or flowers is made to keep the spirits happy. As we drove along the highway outside of the city, we passed outdoor centers with plants and pots and these colorful little houses. It was like a Garden Ridge Pottery store for spirit houses. We also saw people sitting in the temples shaking containers of sticks. Our guide had me try it. The round cylinder holds many plastic sticks with numbers. I shook the container until one stick – only one – fell out. It was an eleven. Small papers stacked on the side of the temple gave information for each number. For me, my “desires are accomplished.” That works for me.
     
    Whatever the offering, people bring it to the temples or buy it outside. They remove their shoes before entering (as a result, shoes are piled outside), walk across the cool, smooth entrance, and step inside to the soft carpeted interior. They kneel in front of the Buddha, bow and deliver their offering.
     
    We saw this play out at temple after temple. For some reason, at the temple Doi Suthep, the offerings were particularly compelling. I was struck by the atmosphere of reverence that pervaded the temple grounds, even in the midst of clueless tourists, inappropriately dressed, staring and snapping photos. Imagine trying to conduct a church service with camera-totting tourists wandering about.
     
    But for all the devotion, it was startling to see monks in the street, walking about, doing regular things and even sight-seeing. We chuckled at a group of four young monks who posed for their photo with the guard at the Grand Palace. The monks live in small rooms surrounding many of the temples. Their laundry, orange robes, hangs outside drying like large orange blankets. But it’s the little activities so common for us that seem out of place for them. We watched a monk line up to use the ATM. Another was talking on his cell phone. A group of ten- to twelve-year-old boys in their orange and yellow robes browsed the aisles of a convenience store, puzzling over chips and candy. A monk on our flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok scrambled along with everyone else to retrieve his bag from the overhead bin.
     
    One of the experiences I planned for Thailand was to participate in a Buddhist meditation session. There is a temple in Bangkok that conducts three sessions a day in English. We located it across from the Grand Palace, and I made plans to return for the 7-10