There is something deeply spiritual watching Buddhist months on the pre dawn alms walk. The donations by the local devotees will keep each individual monastery going. Their orange and saffron robes contrast with the dawn shadows and grey houses. Alas anyone visiting Luang Probang will have this illusion abruptly shattered by the arrival of convoys of Chinese tourists bussed in especially for this ceremony. Each morning lines and lines of plastic chairs and stools are set up, by the tour companies, for the comfort of hundreds of Chinese arses soon to arrive. The ensuing spectacle is both farcical and appalling. Cameras sprout by the hundred and are shoved into the monks faces by the standing visitors and up their nose by the seated. Performance participation! This behaviour stretches the entire length of the monks rounds, probably over a kilometre. Once done and the pre arranged donations (Oreos and trinkets, again provided by the tour companies) are exhausted, these tourists get back into the convoys of vans and buses and shuttle back to their hotels for breakfast congee., whilst the monks can be seen, in the back streets, dumping unwanted schtuk.
A horribly sad episode in the history of the old imperial capital and spiritual centre of Laos. As these tourists fly or train in on Chinese transport, stay in Chinese owned hotels and are bussed around by the Chinese tour company, the financial benefit to Laotian people is minimal, one would guess out of all proportion to the indignity. Disneyland by the Mekong.
Apparently the monks hate it, the locals hate it and I’m guessing the Buddha ain’t keen.
No one can propose a solution. The cops are indifferent as no secular laws are broken and there is no traffic at that hour. One also sees the increasing influence of Chinese capital both official, in the belt and road initiative, and private in the hotels and casinos.
Whilst I think it’s time for the Sangharaja ṭo stand up, I guess divine intervention is the only hope
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