4th May 2009
Whenever I am in England, as I am now, I find myself spending a lot of timethinking about Thailand, and Phana in particular. So last week I resolved to re-start my blog about life in Phana. I had just made up my mind to make the start, when I got the news that someone I had got to know well there had died. It was not at all unexpected, but it means that I start 'phanathailife' by writing about someone who will not be there when I get back later this year; someone I had come to know quite well over the last five or six years, but whom I had actually first met at a very important moment in my life just a little short of forty years ago.
Phrakru Udom, Abbot of Wat Phra Lao Thepnimit, Phana
Phrakru Udom taking part in the Boun Pravet celebrations, Phana
Phrakru Udom died last week in the Cancer Centre at Saphasit Hospital in Ubon. The last time I saw him he was in a private room at the hospital on a floor reserved for monks.
Three of us had gone to visit him, my wife Pensri and I together with Tuan, Phrakru Udom’s younger brother, who had been adopted by Pensri’s father because Tuan’s family was poor and contained a lot of boys, whereas Pensri was one of eight girls and no boys. He was not alone in the hospital room. Another monk was also there as was the secretary-monk who had shared his kuti at Wat Phra Lao in Phana ever since he became abbot at Wat Phra Lao, the two of them staying with him 24 hours a day. And we were soon joined by his sister, who had brought his morning meal. She had never married, and had brought her brother his meal every day that he was in Phana for the last sixty-one years, the time he had been a monk.
Phrakru Udom was a mor lam singer before he was ordained, quite a well-known one apparently. As a monk he became well-known for his chanting as I learnt when I took him on a trip to the Lao border at Chong Mek / Vang Tau. We arrived there at about 10.30, so he guided us to a restaurant where the owner told us that she had known him for years because of his chanting, and she tried to go to Phana to pay him her respects several times a year if she could. The three monks in our little party sat at a table apart, of course, and I formally offered them food, but it was provided by the owner and she made sure that all her staff came to pay their respects. I have been back to the restaurant several times since then, and she always remembers me and my connection with Phana and Phrakru Udom.
Phrakru Udom (on left) outside the restaurant at Chong Mek
Another trip we went on with him was to the amazing, as yet unfinished, Phra Maha Chedi Chai Mongkhon at Wat Phra Nam Thip in Roi-Et Province. Phrakru Udom’s sister joined us on this one. She said that she had always wondered what it would be like going on a trip with a farang! On the way up the mountain that the Chedi sits atop, we stopped for grilled chicken, sticky rice and som tum. Here they did not know our abbot, but it was interesting to see how quickly and thoughtfully they made the necessary arrangements for him to eat.
Phra Maha Chedi Chai Mongkhon, Roi-Et Province
Phra Maha Chedi Chai Mongkhon
But what was the important moment of my life when I first met Phrakru Udom?
That was when I married Pensri in Bangkok in November 1969. Her parents and a lot of friends and relations came down from Phana for the occasion, and so did a sangha of nine monks, including the then relatively young Phra Udom, only about 40 years old then. I wasn’t aware of seeing him again, or of having seen him before at all, until November 2003 when our family organised a Kathin at Wat Burapha. He sat in our garden all through the afternoon when a group of old men were building the traditional ong kathin, a pavillion made of bamboo poles and thatched with banana leaves. The following year, when he had become abbot of Wat Phra Lao,Pensri and I went to pay him our respects and he reminded me of having been at our wedding, and also of seeing me when my father-in-law celebrated his sixth-cycle birthday (72 years) in 1982, and again when my mother-in-law died in 1995. At these times he had been the abbot of Wat Burapha and so had been the senior monk at Yai’s cremation.
Pensri and I did not always agree with the ‘improvements’ Phrakru Udom proposed to make at Wat Phra Lao, but in just about every case he proved to have been right. We were the conservative ones. The Wat Festival has grown bigger in his time, and so has the budget available to him, much of it coming from the government since Wat Phra Lao is a ‘cultural heritage’ site, and the development of Amnat Charoen as a new province has seen the wat promoted as a tourist destination, with some success. Trees have been cut down – they were diseased – and replaced by new plantings; the main compound area in front of the ubosot has been laid to tiles; a new long, open-fronted sala has been built facing the ubosot and at last the wall on the southern boundary of the compound has been rebuilt. And early this year several new, small, wooden kutis have been built. Though pride and pleasure are ‘defilements’ which a long-term monk like Phrakru Udom should not indulge in, the people of Phana have felt both when visiting Wat Phra Lao these last few years.
Phrakru Udom, a senior monk, and one born, raised, ordained and resident in Phana all his life, will probably not be cremated for about a year. I hope that Pensri and I will be in Phana when that time comes, to pay our last respects to him.
Beautiful - visited there in October 2009. I would recommend to any visitors to this part of Northern Thailand.
Posted by: Geoff | 19 June 2010 at 05:11 PM
Today, I went to the beach front with mmy children. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter annd said "You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear." She placerd the shell to her ear annd screamed. There was a herrmit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely offf topic but I had to tell someone!
Posted by: Art in ChiangMai | 10 November 2013 at 11:34 AM