Thailand Volunteer Story: Chris

I'm coming in to the last week of my temple stay so this seems like a good time to write my blog so I can then relax for the rest of my stay. I left Bangkok for Nongkhai on the night train on a second class sleeper ticket almost a month ago and I was more than pleasantly surprised. It’s the most comfortable form of travel so far and I will definitely be using it to get back to Bangkok for my flight to Malaysia.

I was picked up at Nongkhai train station and taken to a house in Nongkhai where I was to spend two days learning Thai culture, the rules of the temple and what to expect in terms of teaching and rituals in the temple. There were five western lads staying at the house and the two nights I spent there felt like a summer camp with school. We walked round the town in a group, giggled a lot, drank beer and watched dvds. It was great to have that immature feeling of being at home with `the boys` just before a serious thing like the temple stay. The temple is called Wat Phrathatwittaya and the whole grounds are set in between a railway and a main road that run parallel about four hundred metres apart. In the centre of the grounds is the two story school, The ground floor has offices (one of which has been converted to my bedroom), a computer room and a big meditation hall. Up the stairs is the school. There are eight classrooms with a fair few computers so I have been accessing the internet easily and the kids here have pretty good facilities for learning.

Between the school and the main road is the newly built church, the abbots house and the radio station (that’s right, they have their own radio station!). Behind the school, towards the train track is the monk and novice’s accommodation and dining area which is an open air space with tables and chairs. There are seven monks and around forty novices that live here full time and during school term there are twelve monks and around a hundred novices living here.

When I arrived I discussed with Tharabun, the head monk here, what he expected from me and what I wanted from the stay and we were both happy with the outcome. I was to live as a novice monk by the rules of the novices and teach for four hours a day from Monday to Friday. My daily schedule was to begin at six but I was to be woken every day without fail at four am by the radio station which plays over the loudspeakers (the radio station plays prayers, meditation rites and readings about Buddha and is broadcast up to 25 miles away).

When six o’clock finally comes round I jump into my trousers and, barefooted, head out to the front gate and tag on the end of the line of novices, led by a monk, for morning alms. An hour or so is spent walking through the local village taking whatever food is offered and blessing those that give it before heading back to prepare the first meal for seven-thirty. After eating (always rice and soup, sometimes fruit and biscuits if we’re lucky) there is a three hour gap until lunch which I usually fill with meditation in the church, a bit of reading and doing my internet chores (emailing friends, family etc.). Then lunch, which is a repeat of breakfast, which runs from eleven ‘till twelve with a prayer at the end. The hour between lunch and school is time for yard work; raking leaves, watering plants and getting rid of dog muck and then the teaching proceeds one o’clock until five o’clock.

The novices range from thirteen to eighteen in age but other than a couple, they all have a very low level of English and are quite immature so it’s basically four hours of game playing in English and trying to get them to absorb as much of it as they can. My evenings are then spent with more meditation and relaxing. I usually get to bed by nine or ten but never sleep through because of the twelve adopted dogs that live here. There are eleven males and one female so the dogs spend the night barking and fighting over which one gets the female for the night. Once sleep finally finds me I wake at four again and the cycle repeats again.

I hope this doesn’t sound negative because I love the cycle, I love hanging around with the novices and monks and trying to wean English out of them and as the time has gone by I have formed bonds with the group of the youngest novices here and I give them for extra English tutoring in the evening and play football, juggle and hacky sack during the evening and at the weekends.

The best thing about the stay so far has been learning meditation with a young monk called Peng. Over the course of ten days he has taught me sitting, standing and walking meditation and has encouraged me to do this twice a day, every day. I have stuck to it so far and it always leaves me feeling energised. The whole concept of meditation is simpler than I expected and I feel like, after a few dizzy attempts, I have gotten fairly good at focusing and enjoying meditation. Peng is twenty years old and arrived from ten days of meditation in the forest during my second week and is one of three monks that can speak a fair bit of English. The other two are Tharabun, the head monk and Crazy (he told me that was his name), the science teacher. Tharabun is very busy but makes sure every day he comes to see how things are going and practice his English.

Crazy monk is very popular among the novices and has been really good to me, we have been for a few walks and he has helped me to understand Buddhism and the community of this temple. The novices are all from either poor families or orphaned and this school is there only chance at an education. If they follow the Buddhist laws they get a home, food and an education in return. Crazy can also juggle and we have mastered juggling to each other which goes down very well in class. For ten days there was a young Thai girl called Aui volunteering, she could speak English to a similar level as Peng and between us we ran some pretty good lessons and spent the evenings after school playing scrabble to help her improve, she invited me for dinner at her family home which would have been brilliant but I wasn’t allowed to eat after midday (Buddhist novice monk rule which I am trying to follow)!

Of the novices there is a group of about twelve who are clearly improving every day and I have started spending extra time helping them with their English and we have started to play six a side football until we were caught playing football by the abbot and were punished. The other novices got spanked (I didn`t!!!) and then we had to spend the whole of the next day (Sunday) doing yard work. I felt like I was truly back at school.

I am not sure what I set out to achieve when I came here but I feel like whatever it was I have done it. I have fulfilled the physical demands of not eating after midday, I have worked selflessly to teach English to the novices and on work around the temple grounds, learned meditation and spent a lot of time thinking about the good and bad things that I knew I had to. It has been so good to stop in one place for a prolonged period but I am now looking forward to getting back onto the road again with new opinions and ideas and feeling like a person with more to offer than when I arrived.

I would just like to thank T2T for providing this fantastic opportunity for not only myself but for future volunteers to experience what it is really like to live as a novice monk and with the Buddhist monks and for providing that intercultural exchange for the poor Laos and Thai monks that live here at Wat Phrathatwittaya.