One of the first things that Wendy did on arrival was break the plumbing in our accommodation. To protect PPS’ accommodation from any more havoc that Wendy might wreak, we decided to look for a hotel to stay in after our first night there. Bun Rith, the freshly appointed manager of PPS, offered to show us a few hotels in town after work. Then he invited us back to his house for dinner. His mum prepared us a lovely dinner. One of the things Bun Rith told us, is that every man can become a monk at some point in his life. In fact it used to be considered more or less obligatory, as a form of respect towards your parents. This does not have to be too burdensome, because you can apparently become a monk for just one week (in fact you might want to do this after a fight with your wife since you’re not allowed to come to close to any woman while you are a monk!). Being a monk can actually do much good, especially to poor young boys who don’t have many opportunities; monks receive not only free food from the whole community but also usually free education.
The philosophy behind being a begging monk is that you should receive everything you are given – after all beggars can’t be choosers. And this is a good thing because monks should not be too focused on receiving high quality objects.
As far as we can tell, the process is as follows:
The monk stands in front of a house
Someone may come out and give the monk food
The donor prays to the monk
The monk walks away smiling (presumably because they’re always smiling, but some might argue it’s because he’s just received free food!)
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