Please don’t feed the Monks
No that’s not a typo, I am not talking about monkeys, although you really shouldn’t feed them either, I am talking about the orange-clad Buddhist Monks of Laos. Every morning the people of Luang Prabang wake up before dawn to prepare food and take it to the streets for the morning alms ceremony in Lao called Tak Bat. They lay a simple blanket on the sidewalk and kneel, waiting for the Monks of the nearly 80 different temples to leave on their morning rounds. The monks collect food from the town’s people and that is the food that sustains them for the day. The people do this as their sacrifice, but also to support the monks and their religion. This is done every day as it has for centuries… Only in recent years, there have been some new faces passing rice to the monks. The new ‘cool’ thing to do is to take part in the centuries-old transitions of the Theravada monks in Luang Prabang, Laos. You can actually pay a tour company to pass out food and ge...