Thai Life in Phana

Retreat in the Forest, Day one

We arrived too late this morning to take part in the alms round at Don Chao Poo so we had to take our food offering directly to the 'food station'.

All the food offered to the monks into their bowls is pooled and sorted. Far too much food is provided, but it has to feed the monks and all the men and women in white (upasika) who take 8 precepts each day of the retreat. And when they have all eaten it is the turn of the lay people.The monks eat directly from their bowls during these 10 days, as forest monks always do. 'Wet' food is put into a little plastic bag and tightly sealed with a rubber band. Most of the rice offered this morning was the sticky variety and I guess that will be the case  every day.

Now what looks good here?

All of it!

Be patient ...

... and now you can help yourselves. When a monk's bowl gets full of rice it is emptied into a big basket like this one. The bowls quickly get full so the men pushing the basket-on-a-cart have to be spaced out along the line of monks.

The girls just want to have fun.

We put up with this every year ...

... so we might as well make the best of it.

 There's a good-looking fella!

The pillow suggests he lay down to sleep rather than sat up as the most stringent tudong monks do.

A neat and tidy monk was here:

How did this robe get so far up a tree? It's a mystery.

 
 

Caught in the act!

 

Women eat Thai food (and some men too). This is their time (at last) and place.

Schoolgirls have been taking care of the food arrangements and now they are serving the lay people.

Here we have a young monk with his proud mum and sisters. There was a call for him on his mum's mobile and he had to be found so he could take the call. When he got to them it was the tiny little boy who had to hand him the phone because women don't hand something directly to a monk. I guess if his sister had had a baby daughter I would have had to do the honours as the nearest man.

When everyone had eaten it was time for most of us to go home. Not for those who were staying to practise meditation and listen to some teaching later in the day. I left too but will return again before the retreat is over.
 

 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

Preparing for retreat in Don Chao Poo

Every year Don Chao Poo forest in Phana is taken over by hundreds of monks, novices and men and women in white who have undertaken to join them for 10 days of meditation and Buddhist teachings. The people of Phana undertake to feed them every day from 21st December to 30th December. Different villages take it in turns to do this, though other people are welcome to join them on any day. Some people go to the forest every day to offer food as the long line of monks go on the morning bindabat, or alms round.

The opening ceremony, which is not attended by the monks, will take place in the forest tomorrow morning. But for the last few days people have been preparing the forest.

Boys and girls from Udomwitayakorn Primary School near the forest have been working hard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of their work has been sweeping leaves from the main entrance to the forest and collecting some of the rubbish that litters the area.

The big problem is plastic bags. People bring food for the monkeys in plastic bags and although some of the bags get put into rubbish bins, the wind and the monkeys often take them out again. Some of the monkeys also have the habit of snatching bags of food and making off into the forest with it, so bags can be found all over the place. The problem of plastic bags here needs to be looked at and something done about it. Not that there is an easy solution but I'm sure it could be alleviated.

Anyway, at least once a year something gets done and this young lad seems to be enjoying himself even if he isn't working as hard as the other boys. I wonder how he got into this priviliged position. My guess is he knows somebody.

Outside the forest, this tetsaban employee is delivering flags to line the front wall of the forest.

Leaving my car inside the forest while I went off to take photos was a big mistake.

If the schoolboys were working hard, this was playtime for the forest residents.

 

I went back to the forest today, Sunday. The monks arrive today and the tetsaban had arranged a reception counter for them.

Most of the monks have attended this annual retreat before and they knew their way around the forest. All the same, someone was on hand to greet them and help them with their camping equipment. Some of them came with a glot, the tent which looks like an umbrella when it is rolled up. This is the one which tudong monks use when they are on their travels. I couldn't get a photo of one today because monks were changing their robes at each of the ones I found.

 

Many monks are into camping equipment of a more recognisable form.

A kitchen was set up near the reception area.

It looks as if a cup of tea will soon be served. These monks will only eat once a day during the 10-day retreat but tea without milk is allowable at any time, as is water, of course.

There are several of these water tanks in the forest and part of the preparations has been to clean them out.

The most important area is this one where the monks and other meditators will sit. Straw has been laid on the ground beneath the trees and there are piles of straw in several places so  that it can be renewed when necessary.

The monks also practise walking meditation along the shady paths of the forest.
 
 

I will be returning to the forest tomorrow morning because Moo 1 where I live is the main sponsor for offering food on the first day. Because it is the first day, though, there will be hundreds of people waiting to offer food to the monks. Then I will go back on other days to see how things are going. So I hope to post again about this meditation retreat later in the week.

 
 

 

Just another quiet day in Phana

I have to thank the Oyster Band for my title today although their song was much more heavily ironic than this post will be. That's because it really was a quiet day in Phana and as it got dark here this evening I was thinking that nothing at all had happened. But on reflection that is not quite true.

The loudspeaker from Moo 9 started up really early today, about 5 a.m. it woke me and by the sound of it it had been going on a while. There is a special harvest festival being held at Wat Burapa in Moo 9 over the next three days and it started this morning.

By about 7.15 Pensri and I were out in the drive playing badminton, a daily activity for us and a source of entertainment for the busloads of schoolkids who go by between this time and 8 o'clock. My usual intense concentration was disturbed though by what I saw on the cables strung out along the far side of the road. I rushed for my camera and then rushed with it up the road, The result was poor but at least it is proof that I'm not just making all this excitement up.

Now something like this would not get a mention if I lived in Lopburi, but here it only happens about once a year. I suspect that it is the same elderly male that goes walkabout on the wires. He is heading home here but is still about a km away.  

As we were eating breakfast on the verandah (it makes us think we are at Southfork) a young woman came by and squatted down next to Pensri and asked her advice on some family problems she is having. I wandered off to my 'study' at the back of the house to do some work on an extended piece of writing I am currently busy with in an off and on sort of way. A friend of mine, a former illegal immigrant now made legal, came by with a gift of a large fish. We said we would have it for lunch and an hour or so later he was back with lots of vegetables for us to eat with it. While he was away a friend of Pensri's came by with a ripe papaya from her garden. So that was a bit more lunch for us.

Pensri went off to do some photo-copying and while she was away another annual sort of traveller went by on a bicycle. I'm not easily fooled so I knew straight away that it was Santa Claus. Except, of course, that it wasn't. Because I caught a glimpse of a very neat leg emerging from the red robe. You shouldn't be in my blog, I thought, get back, get back to  where you once belonged Mrs Claws.

Lunchtime came and the fish was one I had never had before, The flesh was similar in colour and texture to a trout but it was a much chubbier fish (though I have never eaten chub) and a bit oily for my taste. Good though. And the papaya was sweeter and jucier than many we buy.

A couple of hours after lunch we were both on the verandah again, this time I was having a foot massage from the woman I met at the community day recently. A man from Wat Phra Lao committee came and talked us into donating towards moving the crematorium a bit further west. At the moment they need money for land-filling, 200 Baht a truck-load.  He had a big accounts book with him and took a long time telling us who had paid up so far and how much. So he put us down for 5 loads and we paid up. We don't much like their reasons for moving the crematorium (more room for the stage when they hold the annual festival) but on the other hand it will be moved further from us, so on balance it's to our advantage.

A couple more visitors. Ajarn Kanet, headteacher of one of Phana's schools, came round to talk to Pensri about the school reunion they are organizing together. Then, just after I had finished my foot massage, another ajarn came round to collect some proof-reading I had done of some work sheets he had prepared for his English classes.

And finally (but I can't really be sure of this for at least another hour since it is now 8.30 p.m.) Mr Arporn came round, coughing badly. Yesterday he was coughing worse and took himself to the district hospital just before dusk. He took a short cut from his house through Don Chao Poo, the local forest and monkey sanctuary. On one of the sandy tracks he came across a python, about 6 metres long and as fat as his admittedly skinny thigh. He didn't have much time to be frightened but he managed to be and accelerated past it because he reckoned if he had braked he would have stopped right up next to it. He also mentioned that it was lucky he wasn't on his bicycle becaue it doesn't have any lights. I don't actually think pythons are a danger to fully-grown humans but I didn't want to spoil his story. And I may be wrong. I definitely wouldn't hang around to put my theory to the test.

People used to talk about the python in Don Chao Poo but a couple of years ago the monkey population started to increase and it was assumed that the python was no more. It was a defunct python. Etc, etc, etc. I met an Englishman a couple of years ago who lives about 75 kms away. He said that he used to have a Burmese python but it grew too big so he put it in a box and drove it to Don Chao Poo where he released it, hoping it liked macaque monkeys. So I just wonder ...

I am also wondering whether tomorrow will be another quiet day in Phana. We shall see.

 

Monkey Troubles

 

    Phana is known as the monkey town by some insensitive people (farangs is how they are usually known). I have never heard anyone from Phana use any such term. The self-coined description of Phana is “the land of scholars” which is perhaps overdoing it a bit but it is certainly preferable to monkey town. The land of scholars thing was well-earned in the past because Phana was home to only the second school in the whole of Ubon Ratchathani province, just one year after the first was founded in Ubon in 1897. From then on Phana’s scholastic fame spread as teachers born there were sent out to teach at schools all over Isan.

 

    Phana often features in monkey stories in the national press. The story is always the same but it has appeared several times in the last few years. It reports that the tribe of monkeys in Don Chao Poo (wildly overestimated as being in the thousands) is starving and needs people to come and visit and feed them. It has never been clear who places this story as certainly no reporter has been known to come and investigate. It might be in the interests of Phana Municipality to attract more visitors to the town, but the story always criticises them for neglecting the monkeys so they are not likely to be the source of the story. In fact, the monkeys are not starving and the municipality has done a lot for them. Similar stories pop up on local radio stations occasionally, too.

    As far as anyone knows there have been monkeys living in Don Chao Poo for ever. They had never been much of a problem until their numbers began to increase quite rapidly in the last few years. Currently I estimate their number as somewhere between 300 and 400. I have tried counting several times but always lose count round about 300. They stay in the forest at night and most of them don’t venture outside during the day, although some do go out onto the road in front of the main entrance. There has been some invasion of new houses behind the forest and a newly-built private kindergarten there was refused a government licence because on the day it was inspected there were quite a few monkeys on the premises. Occasionally a lone old male can be seen wandering the roads, probably because he has been chased away by the others for some reason. A small family visited our house once, a distance of about 1 km. I don’t know exactly how they made their way there but I saw them leave along the power cables above the road.

 

    The increase in the monkey population of Phana is down to two main factors, the first obviously being their natural randiness. The other factor, though, is down to humans. The monkeys are a popular attraction for visitors from outside the town, and they come to feed them, especially at weekends and on holidays.

 

 

In addition, the municipality, which took over the responsibility of the forest a few years ago, provides them with a daily supply of unhusked brown rice, and has also built water troughs for them.

 

 

Once a year they also put on a ‘sit down’ feast on tables with bright tablecloths. I have never been there for this event so I don’t know how they keep the monkeys away until everything is ready for them.

 

  

 

 

    Whenever people feed them they can behave in a very greedy, grasping manner, and if you have food in a bag the bigger males will try to grab it and the winner will keep all the contents for himself. The braver ones also tend to swarm on you and this can be very alarming, although if you can remain calm this is not as dangerous as it may seem. Sometimes, however, you will find that you can feed younger monkeys and females by hand.

 

Be prepared, though, to fling your food onto the ground and let them fight over it. If you have no food with you the monkeys will let you walk amongst them and they won’t bother you at all.

Don Chao Poo

      DON CHAO POO is a forest on the eastern edge of Ban Phana. It is on your right as you reach Phana from Muang Samsip. In the last few years the Tetsaban Phana, which has responsibility for this forest, has built a new fence along the roadside, and three new entrance gates. They have also widened and extended the concrete roads within the forest, making them less appealing in my view than the old sandy tracks, a few of which still remain; but the forest is now used on several municipal and religious occasions, so the new layout is more practical.

 

                                    Don Chao Poo, the main entrance gate

    The people of Phana believe that the original village was situated close by, possibly where the small satellite village known as Muang Sawat is now. The forest, like many similar forests in this part of Isan, is the 'home' of the village's guardian spirit, hence Don Chao Poo which translates roughly as 'the place of the spirit grandfather'.

    This is the fairly new shrine house that is home to Chao Poo:

The former one was a much more simple affair as the photograph below shows. This was taken in about 1975:

 

    Even earlier, an old tree was regarded as his home and today a small stump of that ancient tree is still visible nearby.

    Inside the new shrine house is a large mural representing Chao Poo, seen below:

 

    There are also four Buddha images in the forest, donated by the families and friends of Mr Rin and Mrs Homhual Mahanil in the early 1980s. The images represent the four significant events in the life of the Buddha: birth, enlightenment, teaching and finally release from the cycle of birth and death and entering nirvana.

 

 

 

 

    The forest is also home to hundreds of monkeys. They sleep in the trees but spend much of the day on the ground, often spilling out across the road outside the main entrance. Chao Poo's shrine is one of their favourite places to play. People come from miles around to feed them, especially at weekends. On the roadside opposite the main gate there are two or three small stalls selling bananas, peanuts, green beans and some other foods which they like. Some of the younger monkeys and their mothers can be fed by hand, but visitors need to beware of the older males which can be very aggressive and greedy, sometimes grabbing and making off with a whole bagful of food. They can be quite frightening, especially towards small children but they are always   impeccably behaved in the presence of the man who feeds them regularly with rice provided by villagers and the Phana Municipality (Tetsaban Phana).

 

    The Phana Municipality tries to encourage people NOT to feed monkeys outside the walls of the forest because of the danger to the monkeys of the passing traffic. Phana people, of course, drive past carefully because they regard the monkeys as 'Chao Poo's children', but outsiders are not always so considerate. However, I can only recall one such monkey fatality in the last few years and I believe it is the only one because people still talk about it.