A New Year brings monks with gadgets

At 7:10pm on Friday 13th April, the clock ticked over to 7:11pm and the new year of 2556 was welcomed in Cambodia. 


Khmer New Year is a big deal, kind of like our Christmas. Everybody heads back to their family "homeland" and there are three or four days of celebrations. But before all of that, it's time to call in the monks for a blessing.


Before new year, it is traditional for monks to bless the office and staff. Claire was first to experience this and she came home with tales of fruit and sweets bouncing of the heads of the kneeled, bowed staff after being thrown as part of the blessing. The fruit is literally called rich and is meant to bestow wealth and the sweets represent sweetness of life.

Stole this from Google Images because we were far too respectful to take pics

So during the blessing in my office, I was sitting head bowed in a horribly awkward position comforted only at the prospect of fruit and sweets. Except it was water droplets that soon hit my head. I looked up to the ceiling only to realise that it was the monks flicking the water at us, quickly followed by flower buds.


I sat respectfully bowed and motionless with cramp setting in, whilst all around me staff were answering their mobile phones and throwing flower buds over other staff or in the gap down the back of people's trousers as they bent forward. I had become used to Khmer people answering their mobile phone no matter where they are when it rings, but I was shocked by what I saw next.


As one monk was chanting and blessing us, the other one was sitting beside him chatting on his mobile phone. Yep, not all monks are the propertyless, wizened old men that we mythologise. 

Some monks just chilling

In fact, rather than attainment of monk-hood being the result of lifelong study and sacrifice, any male of any age can just walk into a pagoda, shave their head, don some robes and hey presto you're a monk. And if you get a bit bored, you just change your clothes, walk out the pagoda and that's the end of your monk-hood. Until you maybe want to become a monk again.

I was asking him if that was the same robe Obi Wan Kenobi had

Some families send their sons to the pagoda to get educated; others go for shelter and food; and we've been told others go to avoid a jail sentence. The idea of not owning property is quaint and observed by some but others have laptops and motos etc, whilst the illusion of monks being pure was shattered on day 3 here when I saw one having a fag. Worse, vulnerable women who have gone to a pagoda for shelter have subsequently become pregnant. How this was achieved when monks are not allowed to touch women is particularly impressive. 


Despite this reality, monks still enjoy the highest reverence here. There is a special word to greet them and even the King (or God-King as he officially is) must bow down to the youngest monk. Restaurants give them free food and shops give them money. 

Monks getting a free lift

We met a monk in our first week who had survived the Khmer Rouge and walked hundreds of miles to reach Phnom Penh and a pagoda he wanted to join. He spoke passionately about Buddhism and explained its teachings. He was clearly committed and sincere about his beliefs, it just seems that there is the odd one or two that aren't how you imagined them to be.


Happy New Year
Gordon