Kathina Ceremony 2011

I had wanted to attend this for so long (5 years!) and finally, I made it this year. This is our first year we attended this ceremony as one whole family.
Kathina Ceremony provides one of the most popular occasions for merit-making. The Buddhist people celebrate this robe- offering ceremony with profound respect and devotion to the monks, who have just spent three months in the monastery observing the Vassã –the Rains Retreat. In rural Thailand, everybody in a village will participate in the Kathina ceremony as a community activity which may last anywhere from one day to as many as three days.

The night before Kathina ceremony, we prepared the ingredients for Nonya Pai Tee. And my mum woke up at 4 a.m. to cook the ingredients. We also ordered 200 of Mini Cakes and we were surprised that the cake shop auntie contributed 16 Swiss Rolls. And my brother's friend who happened to dropped by managed to join in the ceremony too. See...how happy they are!

This is our two stalls, Cakes and Nyonya Pai Tee. Don't misunderstand, this is not a charity sales. NO MONEY INVOLVED!! Whoever came, just took the foods and ate. We did not sell and they did not pay. But, they can make a little contribution to our monastery, not through us but through the person-in-charge. We had around 30 counters for them to make their contribution. This year, some of the contribution will go to Thailand for the flood victims, some of the contribution will be used to print Sutra books and the rest will be kept for the expenses of the monastery.

This is my brother and his friends, with my very BUSY and TENSION mum as well as my great helper, my hubby. This minute, I saw my mum and the next minute, my mum was gone! She was so busy!

Some of the foods stall. Forgot to ask my mum exactly how many stalls.

The other races also made their contribution, the non-halal stalls. I guess that when it is really all about doing good deeds, there is no difference between races.

The official offering to the monks. The followers came as early as 6 a.m., putting their offering along the roadside. It is indeed a grand view!

My devoted hubby, Oscar. Very happy that he supports in whatever I want to do. I think this is a very good experience for all of us, doing the good deeds together! And ya, just a reminder to all who read this, we DO NOT give MONEY to monk and MONK DO NOT ACCEPT MONEY TOO. Beware of those FAKE MONK.

Next, it was the Pindapata Food Offering.

There was chanting ceremony, robe-offering ceremony but I didn't managed to take any photos of it as I needed to standby at the stall. All I managed to take is this photo of the main hall before the ceremony started.

Anywhere, my hubby managed to take this photo of my girls and I. Yup! My girls still wearing their pyjamas at that time...hehehe...the girls are so happy that they managed to get the Angry Bird balloon and pencil. They had fun too throughout the whole event.

It was a success! Everything was taking care of. There were dustbin around and everyone was being very co-operated, keeping the environment clean. The toilets were clean too. And warm reminder of recycle use of the utensils were put up too.

At the end of the day, we were so tired but very HAPPY and very CONTENTED! Next year, we will be back again!