I wanted to do a mini post about the Experience I had last morning as I feel like there is a lot to say about it and it deserves a bit more than a paragraph.

When I arrived in Luong Prabang one of the first things I noticed was that their were monks everywhere. I saw some young children hanging out on their phones and I saw older monks walking down the street. It is probably very normal, but since I am not used to it, I was a bit surprised.  The next day we visited a few temples and saw crews of monks doing assorted chores such as sweeping, painting, cleaning etc. I then saw signs and heard more about the morning monk offering which was something that has been happening in this area for a long time.

At sunrise all of the monks leave their homes and walk down the street where there are little stools set out for towns people to sit on. The towns people line up with sticky rice, small pretzel like bites and some sweets. The monks walk by in a long line and accept the offering from the people in these brass buckets they are carrying.

As they walk down the line their buckets end up getting full, so there are baskets all along the street which they place their extras in. The sticky rice is basically just handled by hand and  a small clump is offered to each monk.

There are several people on the street selling kits of food for tourists to partake if they like. There are rule signs posted to try and keep the tourists at a respectful distance in taking photos and they have standard pricing for the food so that people aren’t taking advantage of the situation.

I woke up at 5:30am and headed down to the main street at 6. Upon arriving the sun was just starting to peak above the mountains but it was still pretty dark. They had lights strung up along the road for this particular purpose.

There were A LOT of Korean tourists both taking part and taking photos of their colleagues taking part. When the monks started their possession, the tourists were running and so excited to get a photo and honestly it was a little rude. Flashes were going off and people were totally disregarding the somber nature of the spectacle. I was a little annoyed and was trying my best to keep my distance.  The signs has said that you should wear pants and be respectful, so instead of my initial plan of going for a run and stopping off at the offering as part of it, I put on pants and went there before my run.  Others were not following this dress code either.

I was a bit torn by the spectacle to be honest, as it was a very strange mix of tourist attraction and meaningful spiritual connection.  I am very glad I woke up early to witness it though.  I also noticed on my way out of town the next morning on my mini bus that there were smaller processions away from the main streets where locals were the only ones giving out food.  This made me feel a little bit better about the whole thing to be honest.