Making Merit and visiting the tallest Buddha in Thailand

It was to be a great day trip because we had so many reasons to go. Lauren was out visiting and that meant my Thais friends wanted to show her a great time. Pee Nok and I, as recommended by the fortune teller, needed to be making merit more often in order to help with our ailments (her back and my stomach.) Pee Dtia, who I had met just that day, was very keen to go the wat as well, but also was just happy to be going out for a trip. Perhaps most excited of all were the kids, Bam and Tam (short for Bamboo and Tamarind), who were thrilled to be hanging out with their honorary big sister, Lauren.


Lauren and I went out the night before to buy our offerings to the monks. Offerings come in all shapes, sizes, and amounts but one of the most common “packages” is an orange bucket over-stuffed and shrink-wrapped. Inside the bucket is food, sandals, toilet paper, any thing, everything a person, or a monk might need. Lauren and I showed up just before the store closed, two of its garage doors already pulled down. The shop owners assumed we were confused walking in and, listening for English, even misheard my clearly spoken Thai stating we needed to buy a bucket to give to the monks.

It is always a happy time making these types of purchases; the shop owners are always over-ecstatic to see falangs making the effort to know the true character of their culture and traditions. This is when they seem the most proud and happy, seeing the rare occasion of foreigners enjoying the lesser-known but more important points in Thai life.

To get back to where they had the tamboon buckets we walked around large Buddhas, stacks of boxes of joss sticks, spirit houses and other tangible parts of Buddhist traditions. Pictures of His Majesty the King were lined high across the hall, showing him at all different ages in different formal attires, waving at crowds, photographing baby turtles, giving food to monks, listening to his people with a pencil and notebook in hand, or giving a speech from the holy alter of the Emerald Buddha. There were buckets of different prices and, unsure of what was appropriate, we decided middle of the road was best and bought two for 150 Baht each. Two buckets on the bike, we took them home and set them aside for the next morning.

The next morning we were picked up at 8:30 sharp and made another stop at the local apothecary before heading out. An old man stood behind a disorderly counter covered with old boxes of all shapes and sizes. Behind him was a wall full of the same boxes, large jars of pills, and smaller bottles of colorful liquids. It looked more like an ancient storage room than an actual functioning apothecary. Pee Nok talked to them man about buying some drugs to give to the monks and he started to search around is shop, digging in seemingly random boxes, but each time pulling out the drugs Pee Nok had asked for. We ended up each with some paracetamols, betadine, some pills I couldn’t figure out, and a mysterious bottle of a milky white liquid.

I am getting to know the roads in and around our town well, but on this day Pee Dtia took us down dirt roads, through tiny villages far away from town. Eventually we came to a gold and white gate, marking the entrance to the wat. Unlike other religious buildings, a wat is actually a large ground with many different buildings. Some are built for worship, others are the monks quarters. This one was considered more of a “forest” wat, as it was built on a large property of fields, tall palm trees and small ponds.

Lauren and I took our buckets into the wat while the others carried the small bags of medicines and Pee Dtia carried a bucket full of river snails. We kneeled with our gifts at the alter of the Buddha and bowed, praying towards the Buddha three times. Two monks entered the wat, both balled from the ritual of shaving their heads on the full moon, though one monk was young and the other was much older. The older monk, though he didn’t talk much, appeared to have a great sense of humor, constantly smiling showing the few large teeth he still had from his long years of life. The younger monk did most of the talking and apparently he was quite funny as well because everyone was chuckling throughout what I thought was supposed to be a very serious moment.

It did have its serious moments and wasn’t all jokes. We held our offerings high and repeated a Buddhist prayer before handing them to the monks. The women cannot touch monks nor can they hand them anything, so they had to set their offerings on a sheet of paper that the monk pulled toward him, and then lifted them off and set them aside. It ended up all the joking was about the younger monk’s past because he used to be a student at the school we teach at and, as he told it, he was a very naughty student. Eventually the ceremony became more seriousness with several prayers, the monks chanting, then the ritual of shaking water on those who made the offering.
The now blessed river snails were for the same purpose as before, hoping to continue to relieve her back troubles, Pee Nok took them back to a pond on the wat’s grounds at let them free. I talked briefly with the younger of the monks who invited me back out anytime, mentioning he had access to a truck but wasn’t himself allowed to drive. If I came out, he said, I could drive the two of us around and we could hang out for the day.

Our adventure only begun, we left the wat and headed in the direction of Roi Et, the provincial capital only an hour away. There we stopped off at their city park where we fed the fish, and hid from the sun in the shade. At one end of the park there was another place of worship were we shook sticks from a can to find out our fortune.

We walked inside to pay respects to the monks, to Buddha, again bowing to the floor three times before lighting incense. Others bought small pieces of gold leafing to make merit by attaching them to Buddhas representing a day of the week. People always stuck their gold on the Buddha of the day they were born. Walking around the grounds the only real way to look as up. Standing at the base of the Buddha, its feet were huge but it was actually a less spectacular view standing there than it was looking from kilometers away, seeing it watch over all of Roi Et.

When arriving in Roi Et one of the first things you may see is a large gold Buddha standing in the distance. The tallest in Thailand, this Buddha stands incredibly tall over the entire city, holding its hand out as a sign of reassurance. The Buddha stands inside a wat, very different than the one we were at previously in the day. In the middle of town, this wat was on compact grounds with very little space between each of its buildings. The wat was visibly older though still beautiful.

On the way home Lauren and I were tired, just like the kids, a chose to ride the way home lying in the back of the pickup trying to catch some rest from our long day traveling around.