Temporary "Sleeping Quarters" for some of the Visiting Monks
Sleeping quarters up close...
A beautiful old wooden building on the temple grounds
A Large Group of Monks Returning to the Temple from their Morning Alms-Gathering
More monks arriving back at the temple
We took a before-breakfast stroll in Lampang, entering at one point a large wat alongside the river. As we were wandering about the temple seven or eight trucks rolled in to disgorge almost 100 monks returning from their morning food-gathering activities elsewhere in the area. We learned that they were nearly all there for a special 15-day ordination in honor of the King (December 5). This wat is (we learned) a famous site for teaching Buddhism, and the men had come there from all over Thailand on December 1 to be ordained as monks for that two-week period. Six had even come from Kunming, China, having apparently learned of this opportunity on the Internet. (One of hundreds of examples we are encountering in which the old and new are intermingled in today's Asia.)
