We're all going to a Buddhist monastery

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May 6

Wat Ram Poeng is outside the city, near the mountain we diced with death on the scooter. We report to the Foreign Meditation Office and meet Federico, from Argentina, Ian who is English and Diana who is Hungarian via Germany and now is floating around Asia. She has brought an English friend called Ian who is a party boy but willing to give this meditation thing a go - for a few days anyway.

We are issued with white outfits and pillows and assigned rooms. Then we are split along gender lines and a teacher goes through what we need to know - salutations, sitting meditation, and walking meditation. We know there's no food after noon, so I eat some pork sticks in the songthaew but it's heartening to know there is 'soup' at 5pm, and we can buy ice cream and yoghurt. Dairy and soy products are fine apparently.

However there is no phone, no internet, no sex, no talking and you have to get up at 4am. No one thinks I can go without talking for ten minutes, let alone ten days. The wat complex is huge - offices, meeting halls, kitchens, at least 150 rooms for female guests, and the men have their own section. There are loads of trees and paved outdoor areas. It's quite peaceful there.

Our 'welcome ceremony' with the abbot is at 5pm, which causes a little consternation on the soup front, but it's still there when we get out. And when I say soup, there was some dark green liquid that tasted a little like carrot juice, and some white stuff that was kind of like heated soy milk.

The abbot had to take an emergency call during the ceremony, and I was entrusted with placing a bowl of lotus flowers on a shelf which could easily have led to disaster, but it all went OK. At least I think it did - the ceremony was in thai and we had to repeat bits and I'd read the text but I had no idea what I was saying really.

Then we were assigned six hours of meditation to be completed before report time the next afternoon.

For some reason weeks of not sleeping properly had caught up with me before we left for Chiang Mai and I realised I had some kind of viral infection because my immune system had been compromised. And despite a lifetime of sitting cross-legged, I couldn't cross my legs without acute pain in my right ankle (which I did break once) and bizarrely, my right knee.

It's a struggle to stay awake, even knowing that an inch-thick mat is all I have to sleep on. But when you're as tired as I was, even that meagre level of comfort was enticing. On entering the temple, there are eight precepts to take on board - one is not lying on 'high or luxurious beds'. Fat chance. And, as is my lot, I have the room near the barking dogs and the incessantly wailing child. C'est la vie.

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