Mantras, Monks and Motorcycles

The other day, as I was walking the streets of small-town Thailand, I saw a monk on a motorcycle. Perhaps you’ve never seen a monk before, let alone one on a motorcycle, so a word of description may be in order. Monks in Thailand are readily identifiable by their shaved heads and by the flowing orange robes they drape over themselves, hanging from one of their shoulders. Motorcycles have no singular features, as virtually everyone in Thailand rides one.









Having just invested in a digital camera, so as to snap pictures to my heart’s content, I then made it my goal to capture such a monk digitally, and in doing so to prove to my friends back home that monks on motorcycles are not mere figments of my imagination, but rather tangible entities to be photographed by farahngs, which is the word the Thais use to refer to foreigners.

So my friend John and I set out late one afternoon for a Wat, a Thai Buddhist temple. I figured if monks were to be found, that would be a good place to look for them. Visions of an end-of-workday mass-exodus from the Wat, with monks kick-starting their two-wheelers, danced through my head.

I think John just wanted a picture of the local large Buddha statue.

On and on and on we walked, traipsing the pseudo-sidewalks lining the streets of small-town Thailand. I kept my digital camera turned on at all times, because my digital camera, unlike point-and-shoot cameras, generally requires fifteen to twenty seconds to warm up, which is more than enough time to miss a monk zipping by on a motorcycle. As we marched to the Wat, my mantra was, “Keep watching. Don’t let your guard down. If you don’t keep your eyes peeled, you’ll miss the only monk on a motorcycle we’ll see all day.” For each man, woman and child wearing orange on a motorcycle, I was ready. I even drilled myself on non-monk motorists to ensure that I could take a picture in time, were a monk on a motorcycle suddenly to appear.

At last we reached the Wat. As had been the case for the duration of our jaunt, we were the only farahngs in sight when we got there. Indeed we saw some monks—and also the promised Buddha statue—but none of the monks appeared to be in much of a hurry to go anywhere. I mused that we should burgle a bike from one of the locals and just have one of the monks pose on it, but nothing became of that idea. We shrugged off the sneaking suspicion that there was a reason we were the only farahngs there and proceeded to take pictures of, well, just about everything—including the Buddha, which required us to wander off the beaten path, through much standing water and what were undoubtedly water buffalo patties.

When we’d had enough of that, we embarked upon our return trek to the hotel. I’m not sure folks in small-town Thailand have seen a whole lot of farahngs, judging by the number of hellos we received and by the number of people whose heads swiveled completely around after they had already passed us. Nonetheless, I kept my guard up. I was focused.

As we approached an intersection where, for a fleeting moment, I thought I might have seen a monk on a motorcycle during our trip to the Wat, I commented to John that I had a “good feeling” about that intersection. When we got there, John and I were both initially befuddled about when to proceed into the intersection, en route the other side of the street. In small-town Thailand, red doesn’t necessarily mean stop, green doesn’t necessarily mean go, and when you compound these things with the fact that people don’t drive on the right side of the street…things get confusing.

Finally sensing that the coast was clear, I tucked the camera under my arm, lowered my head and made like a fullback through the intersection. I only realized that John wasn’t with me when I heard him shouting, “David! Look! It’s a monk on a motorcycle!” I looked up just in time to see a motorcycle, with a monk straddling the back end, swerve to miss me.

Wouldn’t you know it? I nearly got hit by a monk on a motorcycle.

It was the only monk on a motorcycle I saw all day.