Tamboon Condo

And they came, not too early in the morning, a group of nine monks delivered in a van. We had tamboon in our condominium, organized by the office below. All residents were invited to attend, not all turned up. And we donated money in envelopes or bought food for the monk’s morning meal.


It seemed the first time our condominium had organized this, no one knew exactly what to do and some residents who had experience helped in. Not to worry as these monks although looked and dressed the same have an order in there. Somewhere in the nine, will be the F&B monk. He will tell you how to prepare the food and how it is to be offered. Event Organizer monk will appear among the nine to tell you what to do with the candles, holy water and such when all is lost and not know what proceeds in the middle of prayers. A Marketing monk will appear from thin air if you start to talk about future events. Welfare monk will tell you to turn the fan or air conditioning on when it gets hot. And how much money to offer, how it is to be presented? The Finance and Accounting monk will emerge and help you out. Band Leader monk (who sits first on the left) doubles as the Water Party monk to sprinkle all us with holy juice. The rest will be prayer monks. Lots of us were greenhorns in the blessing session. I had been to many but still hardly know how it works. But in all I had attended and when we were lost, the roles of certain monks will be revealed and came forth to aid.


If you are into community living in Thailand, Thais believe you should attend these in your residence if any or get one organized if none. It is good luck. It prevents bad things like… getting stuck in the lift for no apparent technical reasons for fourteen hours, toilet turning into a powerful geyser with your lovely neighbors’ contents when sitting on it, your car being attacked by cat scratches from about sixteen neighboring cats in the parking lot, pigeon running into your eye beak first when you open your car door, running into a hot iron on the ironing board in the morning naked and groin first… whatever.

So there I sat through the session, immersed in the monotonous gothic like chorus of chants. The drone of hymn reverberated through every cell of my body and every particle of the walls. It was good to be there.