To celebrate the Queen’s birthday, thousands of Pattaya residents converged on Pattaya North Road this morning to give offerings to 2,000 monks. By 0630 the road was already packed with people, including Nik and yours truly.
At around 0700 prayers were chanted:
You will often find these little money trees at religious occasions:
We then had to wait a while till the monks arrived. I sat on the pavement. A lady next to me offered me some plastic to sit on. Once the monks started to walk towards us, someone else moved aside and invited me to get a better view, by standing right in front of them and blocking theirs. Two small examples of just how nice Thai people can be. The monks filed down the rows to fill in all the spaces:
Waiting for the monks to finish their walking activity was obviously a little boring for some, so just time to catch a quick snap! Typical Thai behaviour, even during an event filled with reverence, it is important to have some fun:
Some of the monks had wonderful faces:
Once the monks had stopped their perambulations, people gave them the mountains of food and drink that they had brought. Each monk would receive the offerings and then pass them off to a helper who would take them away. Everything was to be donated to the southern provinces of Thailand.
By 0830 is was over, we drove off for a well-earned coffee and cake, and this monk managed a smile of relief:
