Making Birthday Merit

The first week of December is a big week for Nuch's family. Her birthday is December 1st, her father's is December 3rd, and her uncle's is December 5th. Although I don't need to buy super, expensive birthday gifts (just kidding, Nuch), I do have to "tom boon" or make merit by making a donation to the local temple. So, Sunday afternoon (before lunch at Grilled Fish), we headed off to Wat Mali.

You can't recognize him with the green fan in front of his face, but this is the monk that married Nuch and I.

Here we are donating what mainly appears to be bathroom supplies - soap, toothpaste, a towel. I guess cleanliness is next to Godliness works for Buddhists, too.

Here the monks are chanting - to wish us good fortune in the future, I think.

I asked what the green thing was for. Nuch's father says its to keep spittle from flying out into the crowd while chanting. I don't think he was joking. My guess is the fan could hide the fact that he was actually sleeping. Until I saw this picture, my second guess was that he was reading the Sunday Funnies.

Here's a video of the monks chanting. With the mellow hum of their voices, you can understand why I thought the head monk was catching some Zzzz's behind his green fan.

Finally, our karma credit back in the black, we got ready to leave only to see this poor temple dog staring in from the outside.

Sorry, puppy. Only humans can be enlightened. Maybe next time around.