Last year my friend Nai became a monk for three months aka the 'rain retreat'. He was up by Poipet in a forest monastery. Coming out of Cambodia I detoured 30 km to visit the temple. Nai was shaven-headed and thin.
"How's the food?"
"Can eat one time in morning." Nai's beer belly was gone. "Eat much."
"What's that?" I spotted a rolled up paper on the floor.
"People give monk money. I smoke ice. I bad monk. You want some?"
Nai was lucky not to have been arrested for drugs at the temple, however the government's hotline for drinking during Buddhist Lent has netted two monks this weekend. A peasant in Surat Thani called the police after one monk was making too much noise. Every night. Another monk in Pathum Thani was chased by police after being seen drinking with a woman.
Drinking is against the tenets of Buddhism and breaking vows could result in the stripping of the offender's robes. A defrocked monk is low on the scale of Thai society. Maybe as low as a priest pardoned for pedastry by the Vatican.
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