Wat Pa Tam Wua — life as a monk

The journey to the temple was interesting. Left my hostel "love of Pai" around 6:30 a.m. and walked the 15 min to the bus station to make sure I'd get a place in the 7 a.m. bus to Wat Pa Tam Wua temple.

The bus was closer to a pickup truck, with two rows of bench-like seats running along the sides of a semi open back side, like so many taxis in Thailand are. The floor in-between the seats was full with luggage, big sacks of vegetables and miscellaneous cargo. My legs layed frozen somewhere in the midst of sacs.

The winding road gained a lot of altitude during the 2 or 3 hours long trip. The views of the mountains above the morning mist were breath taking. The car sped through the curves with little regard for conventional driving rules or passenger comfort.

Next to me sat a nice german girl. We got along well but unlike me she decided to stay in silence for the duration of her stay in the temple. Even though we were going to share the same routine for the next days, I bid her farewell at the entrance to the monastery and did not speak to her again.

At the temple Mon Pai, a volunteer lady at the temple, introduced us to the basic rules of the monastery, thought us how to bow and pay respect to the monks and gave us white clothes to replace our own.

After, I brought the bed linen to my room where I found out I'd be sleeping on a wooden bed frame with little more than a thick blanket for padding... Despite sounding terribly uncomfortable I had some wonderful nights of sleep there.

Before joining the daily activities I had some time to enjoy the beautiful surroundings of the monastery. Hidden in a valley, surrounded by forested mountains, the place felt outside of regular space and time. The peacefulness was contagious.

That first day I was quite lost, not knowing the routines and costumes of the monastery. I simply tried to follow the example of my more experienced peers.

The large Dhamma hall was the epicenter of our days — every activity started there. I joined some buddhist chanting to start with and after a short speech by the abbot the monks were served their food in a ceremony by volunteers and the rest of us later got into a line to serve ourselves. All the food was provided through donations and cooked by volunteers, as the monks are forbidden to produce, cook or store their food. They go out to the villages every day collecting food donations with their bowls in a ritual called the alms. They believe that depending on regular people on a daily basis keeps them humble and connected to their community.

The vegan lunch was the last meal of the day. After lunch I met with Angela outside of the Dhamma hall. Angela is a Chinese girl with some sort of brazilian descendency that I didn't get the chance to fully get to know. I met her online and when she found out that I was heading towards the temple where she was staying, she asked if I could buy her a few things, which I did.

Unfortunately she took the vow to remain in silence and so I didn't get to talk to her during our stay. I was a bit bummed that the cool people I was meeting decided to do a silent retreat.

Regardless I started getting into the routine. We did two long mediation sessions, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Each session comprised around one hour of walking mediation through the woods, twenty minutes of sitting mediation and twenty minutes to lying mediation. Besides these, we had chantings and other shorter mediation sessions, and one hour of helping the volunteers do maintenance around the monastery. I would usually sweep fallen leafs off the grounds. We would wake up at 6 a.m. and go back to bed around 8 or 9 p.m. which I was surprised to find out that worked really nice for me.

My forced silence only lasted until the next day when, to my surprise I see a familiar face arrive at the monastery. It was Jana, the German girl I had met on the lantern festival and together with her friend joined the Chiang Mai gang for drinks a couple of times. She arrived at the temple with a new friend — Serena, an Italian lady that she met on the bus on the way to the temple.

Luckily for me these two didn't do any silence vow and so we could hang out for the reminder of my stay, which was really nice.Read more