Susan's Shanghai Blog

Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 122

Luang Prabang is the perfect place to see one of the most sacred Lao traditions, the Buddhist Alms Giving Ceremony. Despite being a highly revered ritual for locals, visitors are encouraged to be involved as long as a level of respect is maintained throughout. Our tour guide helped get everything setup and explained how to do things properly.

Alms giving takes place daily as the sun rises, beginning on the main street of Luang Prabang before spreading out to all the side streets. Our guide met us early and had a place setup for us across the street from the hotel. Ther was a larger mat and then small kneeling mats for each of us along with a scarf that we had over our shoulder. He had gotten each of us a bowl of sticky rice. We werent alone either, you can see down one side all of the locals that were out sitting on little stools. Next to us the other direction was another set of tourists who also had a guide who had gotten them setup on a blue mat. I wonder if the mats indicate to the monks which are tourists and have no clue how to do this properly so that they don't laugh too hard at us?

This lady, also directly across from the hotel, was actually baking pork-filled lao dumplings and would put a few in a styrofoam dish, dish in a plastic bag, and then give the bag to one of the monks as they went by.

As the sun rises, around 200 Buddhist monks depart from their various temples to gather their daily meal. Yes, they do this every day! The tradition of alms gathering dates back to the 14th century, yet still today locals wake early to prepare the food for the monks and wait quietly by the roadside to give their gifts. .

They walk single file, oldest first, carrying their alms bowls in front of them, grouped by which temple they are from. Each monk carries a large lidded bowl, which is attached to a strap hanging from the monk's shoulder. The normal offering is sticky rice although we saw a few other things in their bowls. They are all dressed alike in a bright orange outfit (kinda toga-like but not exactly). We had our tour guide take a few pictures of us trying to give them, here giving to the small, younger monks. It was an interesting thing to take part in. You have to just give a little tiny ball of rice because you need to have enough to handle all 200 monks that are coming through that morning. The rice is REALLY HOT! and the monks don't just stop .. they keep walking, so you are trying to not burn your fingers while picking out just a little bit of rice before the monk walks by. Talk about stressful!

From there, we walked through a market where the locals go (sometimes daily) to pick up food and other goods. One of the interesting things, although difficult to see ... in the third picture there is a grill where you see things wrapped in green. Those are actually bee hives that they warm/grill and then eat.