Monks are rich

These past couple of days I have been off from work everyone from the big city’s have been flocking to the small villages in order to celebrate phcum ben the Cambodian one in an earlier blog that was the Chinese one so it was a bit diff. anyways there were days with out end of monks playing some sort of drumming music and many wat visit I myself as many of you know am not a fan of going to any sort of organized religion if I can help it however for the sake of experience and cultural integration I did go on Friday it was pretty interesting it’s not like the way one would think of the idea of church in America there is a lot of moving all over the place and paying tons of money all over the place. First when I got there I had to sit in a circle with Jentee and her family then I had to put money on a food plate which is something the family brings as well to give to the monks and let me add people give a lot of money for Cambodia on this one plate alone I put in 10000 real which is about 2 dollars and 50 cense American money because you give money the monks prey for you or chant rather. Next I was taken to some alter where I had to light incenses and prey for my dead family members to make them happy so they don’t want to bother me in life I guess lol always happy to appease the ghost in my life! with the burning incense I had to walk across the room with it and put it in this dirt thing. Then I had to get a bowl of rice and then dump out said bowl of rice amount I think it was about 9 chalice type bowls for the ancestors and the monks with each chalice was a plate to give more money and at the end was a huge tree to give more money. So what I took away from this day was dead people and monks love money and food I should also mention there is this food they make with rice and bananas that takes all day to make and this is also offered personally I think it taste like wax which sucks bc all week long when I go for my walks every family calls me over to give me one I always take it and give it to someone else as not to offended anyone. On my way out they had another set up tent I guess to give more money and get more preying done because I am American the family I went with wanted me to experience it all and make sure to take lots of pictures so I was also escorted in the decorated tent I find it really cool how people of Cambodia choose to decorate anything religious related always so bright and colorful as if life is one big rainbow to party on. After about 20 mins we left to go to this mountain I have been wanting to go to however no one told me we were going before hand its that whole Cambodians invite you with out inviting you thing again I refer to this mountain as monkey mountain however I think it might be called something like udong mountain to Cambodian people. I call it monkey mountain for the obvious reason there are monkeys everywhere and they come up to you if you have food to give them you can feed them lots of fun the mountain is sort of small and is more of a park. I don’t know how many tourist know of said mountain but when we were entering in the tuk tuk there was a huge sign to say that foreigners must pay a dollar however the Cambodian family would allow no such thing because to them im khmer enough so they had the tuk tuk driver race though and all we could hear in the background was a Khmer version of hey wait a min needless to say I did not pay the brong price which made me happy. Back to the mountain its actually steps to the top where you can over see all of my province and a huge wat all and all really pretty but a far walk up the people I was with did not want to walk all the way up but I did so I trekked it alone and saw various monkeys along the way like I said above I don’t know that many tourist come to said mountain because I was the only brong around as far as I could see and a lot of the locals were following me up the mountain taking pictures and asking me to be in pictures with them because as they put it we are so happy we love the foreigners and went on to tell me where they study eng. I should also mention they were worried about it being to hot for me as well so I kid you not a couple of kids followed me fanning me the whole time as I tried to tell them I was okay I guess they were really hopeful for money because there were beggars every which way you look in this park and being American all they see is a dollar bill sign across my forehead I always try to explain I live in Cambodia and make no money however I don’t know if they really believe me and if they do a lot of them that talk to me enough will start to ask me when I go back to America will I send them money I refer this as the money circle game I play everyday with Cambodian people.