Happy Buddha Day!

We barely found out it was a holiday, like, three days before it happened, but it was hard to complain about having a day off! We celebrated by taking it easy, finding a Chinese-owned shop in town (which Andrea loved), and doing laundry, but the last half of the day we were able to actually do some fun cultural stuff to commemorate. The waitresses at our land lady’s restaurant invited us to go up to the Buddhist temple with them in the evening, so we hitchhiked (sounded better than a 40 minute walk up the steep hill to the temple) and met up with them. First thing we noticed: everyone there was dressed in white, some from head to foot, and we most definitely were not. An was wearing black! Oops. I guess we hadn’t been able to communicate the dress standards with them.  At first we definitely felt like outsiders as we watched hundreds of Thai people sitting on mats listening to the monks, lighting incense, and bowing a lot, but after meeting up with our friends it turned into a really cool cultural experience.  Buddhism here is a big deal but probably doesn’t fit into what we think of as a religion.  It’s more a deep cultural tradition, philosophy, and way of life.  We climbed to the top of the temple, kneeled down next to some Thais, and got a great view of the valley at night. 

Yep, monks here all wear construction orange.  We can't escape from it even in Thailand ;)

Beautiful full moon across the river valley. It makes sense why the holiday follows the lunar calendar—the whole sky was illuminated!

After coming back down and pouring water over a wood carving of a lotus three times,  we noticed that almost all of the white-shirted people were now circling around the temple with incense, candles, and different kinds of plants and flowers.  

Our thai friends went and bought some for all of us, and we joined in, hands in “wai” prayer-style position.  After three times around the temple, we added our incense and candles to a pot with everyone else’s.  It was cool to be part of such a unique cultural experience! After listening to the whole group chant together with the monks, we walked back down to town.  

One of many pots with incense, flowers and candles.  The lotus is a symbol for enlightenment, but I'm not sure if the rest of them have any significance!

We found out on the way out that this year was the 2,600^th anniversary, so it was a really special year to be here for it! Since Buddhists believe that Buddha’s birth, death, and day of enlightenment were all on the same day, we’re not sure which one was 2,600 years ago, but we’re fortunate we were here for it!!