Once a year during the November full moon, Pha That Luang (Vientiane’s most important stupa, which is just uphill from Vientiane College), becomes the center of everyone’s attention for the Boun That Luang festival. People from around the country come to visit the monument and make merit for one of the country’s largest Buddhist holidays. These events culminate on the final day with a mass early morning alms-giving, and a late-night vien tian (similar to the name of the city, though not actually related), or candlelit walk, around the stupa.
Like most holidays around the world, the solemn religious origins have been compromised in the modern day by rampant commercialism. Some of my students bemoaned the fact that this was “ruining” the event in their eyes, but it seemed to be entertaining for all regardless. For days the stupa grounds are overrun with a carnival not dissimilar to that set up on the Mekong before boat racing. The air fills with the aromas of grilled meat and sticky rice desserts, along with the sounds of hawkers selling their home improvement products. Competing music clashes in the air between the Beerlao and Namkhong entertainment tents. Balloon-popping carnival games, and other diversions, like the ever-present “Here there Be Strange Animals” circus tent sprout up on the temple grounds. And each night a phalanx of cars, motorbikes, pedestrians, and tuk-tuks brings the traffic in the immediate area to a grinding halt. I weaved my motorbike slowly through the waiting vehicles with renewed thankfulness every day after hearing of coworkers who spent 3-5 hours in their cumbersome cars trying to wade through the mess.
Alms are given every morning around the city, on a very small scale. Small clusters of monks from the village temples process along the sidewalks at dawn, and early risers will wait outside their houses to offer some snacks or sticky rice before beginning their day. I’ve observed this ritual a handful of times (entirely due to my tendency to go to bed far too late rather than to wake up early), and have been fascinated by the coexistence of these small religious ceremonies with the prosaic routines of day-to-day life–street dogs sniffing each other, shopowners sweeping the stoop before opening, trash collectors making the rounds, kids getting ready for school, and small handfuls of people praying on the sidewalks before opening their own shops.
At Boun That Luang, this ritual is amplified by the thousands. Between the hours of 5 and 9 in the morning, people gather around the stupa, dressed in their finest, with offerings at hand awaiting the monks. This is a chance for people to pray and to make merit for themselves and their families, and also to give back to the monks and the communities that they represent through these acts of charity. I find it overall a poetic concept, save the fact that most of the “snacks” that are given to the monks are like Thai versions of Twinkies. I guess health food hasn’t made it into the donation circuit yet.
And so, last Thursday my alarm rang at 5:30 am, and in the peach-tinged hours of dusk, my housemate Mike and I sleepily donned scarves and sinhs (well, I wore the sinh), and rode toward the stupa, early enough to get a parking space and to pick up some essentials–sticky rice, tiny boxes of soy milk, and packaged snacks–to put in our gold alms-giving bowls, purchased the day before. As we looked for a place to kneel, and lamented our lack of foresight in bringing a mat, we were lucky enough to hear a familiar call, and find an acquaintance, who invited us to join her and her friends. The women quickly went to work on our baskets, helping us fold 500 and 1000 kip notes (worth approximately 6 and 12 cents, respectively) into neat little fans, to be more presentable. 
They showed us when to touch our baskets and when to press our hands together, as prayers echoed from the tinny loudspeakers, and the bottom half of my legs nearly lost all feeling and circulation from the pain of kneeling for so long (a skill among devotees that I truly admire!). Finally, the procession of monks began and the alms-giving began–we rushed to pull sticky rice and treats out fast enough to keep up with the stream of saffron robes, putting a bit of sticky rice along with money and a snack in each basket. In the past, the monks have sat still and people have processed by, but this year the arrangement was reversed. Mostly this seemed more appropriate, so that the monks were standing above us, rather than vice versa, but it also resulted in their baskets getting overloaded very quickly. Many were trailed by assistants carrying burlap sacks, into which they dumped their baskets every few minutes, which reminded me amusingly of carrying around a pillowcase on Halloween in order to deposit the maximum amount of candy.
Our baskets were empty after only about 10 minutes, so we took our leave from the procession. The sun had risen and was beginning to get hot, a (presumably five-legged) rooster was crowing in the circus tent behind us, and our respects had been paid, in the form of individually-wrapped vanilla wafers and soy milk cartons. Time to go home and nap before class.
