Tan T. had to go with the abbot so I thought I was going to lead the route. In the end, Tan R. led instead. He wasn’t as fast so it was manageable. One of the novices had to go upathak another Ajahn so I had to do two rounds of mopping around the sala. That left me with little time to put on the double robe properly so it fell to pieces by the end.

During morning sweeping my left flip-flop broke, at the expected place. I thought it would be a bright idea to use a candle to melt the rubber back together. I couldn’t have been more wrong and in hindsight it was obvious that rubber and fire don’t play well together. I went to the store room and requested a new pair from Ajahn S. who just happened to be walking by. The provided pair were Nanyang (seems like a tonne of them are offered to the monastery), an iconic Thai brand that have produced basic flip-flops forever. They make them in dedicated monk colours of orange and brown and it’s what all the monks wear. They were incredibly uncomfortable compared to my previous pair but feel like they’d last awhile.

I went on a short trip with the abbot and 6 others to Wat Pa Sai Ngam (วัดป่าไทรงาม) for an annual ceremony called พิธีไถ่ถอนโคกระบือ (loosely translated as “ceremony to save cows and water buffaloes”). There were 69 cows and water buffaloes that were saved from the slaughterhouse and would be given away to farmers in a lottery to be used as working animals. The tradition began 29 years ago as a pair of mother and child cows were stolen from a slaughterhouse and then separated. Neither would eat nor drink anything but then the child escaped. It somehow made it back to its mother where it finally drank the mother’s milk and they both cried. Apparently it was big news at the time. Luang Por Anek saw this (abbot at Wat Pa Sai Ngam, one of Luang Por Chah’s disciples) and saved the animals so they wouldn’t go back to the slaughterhouse again and began the tradition.

There was not much to the ceremony itself. There was a lot of filler at the beginning as the provincial mayor was an hour late. The MC did a good job though and kept people occupied. When he got there, the lottery to give the animals away was over in about 40 minutes. Then Tan Ajahn took us on a tour around the monastery and it was beautiful. It was very well maintained inside and out and we got to see the area where monks ate and it was rather old-school compared to what we have at WPN.