Temple Stay

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Hey,

Thanks Paula and Binni for your lovely comments, you would love working there binni, especially with the little baby tiger cubs as they are gorgeous and you get to play hide and seek with them, and feed them with a bottle ahhhh!

This week has been culture week where we have learnt about the religion of Buddhism, it has been really interesting but don't think I could hack being a buddhist with all the meditating! I got a bit bored after 10 minutes never mind half an hour, three times a day!!!!

On Tuesday we went to stay over at one of the many temples in Singburi, we have been to see quite a lot of them, which have all been so beautiful so it was a bit of a let down when we came to ours as it looked just like a community hall!!! They are in the process of building a new temple so I will let them off. we arrived at the temple at around 4pm and were shown to our glorious living quarters! Basic is the word i would use to describe our room. It was basically a tiled floor with a fan. I am sooooo glad that I took my blow up bed, sleeping bag and mosquito net. I think i was the most luxurios person there hehe. Everybody was taking the mickey until they couldn't get to sleep and woke up the next morning with a bad back and ant bites haha!!! I slept like a log and got no bites haha!!! I am so glad i am a woman as all the men had to sleep in the Ordination hall which is the main hall, that is built over a cellar that houses the skeletons of the monks who have died at the monastery lol. Also there was a skeleton overlooking them, which was the skeleton of the last monk that died there (apparently there bones are boiled arghhhh!).

After bieng shown where we were sleeping we went on a tour around the temple grounds as they have some really old buildings which were quite interesting, and then we went down into the main village. We must of looked like a right bunch of freaks as there were about 50 of us dressed from head to toe in white, we looked as if we were from some strange cult lol. However, the local villagers treted us like celebs as apparently we had been the talk of the town for the last week haha.

In the evening, we spent 3 hours meditating and chanting with the monks and nuns which was an experience. We had books to follow the chanting so that we could join in, but I kept on losing where we were as they were way too fast. The meditating was very interesting, as half way through when the whole room was quiet and peaceful, one of the nuns decided to STRIP!!! She was sitting right next to me, the monks wre disgusted and the calma in the room was completely ruined lol. What an experience!!!!

They had the most gorgeous puppies and kittens at the temple, the puppies were only 4 weeks old, and there were 9 of them. They were soooooo cute, I wanted to snuggle one in my bag hehe. It is really sad as there are so many stray dogs here, of which alot are skin and bone, it upsets me quite a lot that no one tries to help them. Is was therefore quite upsetting thinking that these gorgeous little puppies will turn out in the same way one day. :-(

We got up at 5am the next morning, way too early to go out and collect food with the monks. the monks are not allowed to have any money so they live off what people in the local village offer them. It was quite an experience and interesting to see some of the strange food that they got given. don't think i could get up at 5am every morning though!!!

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