Cambodia. The cook and the sociable monk

One weekend I was out at the SOC and was surprised and a bit puzzled by the arrival of a monk. There’s a local temple nearby, the Bakong monastery, and the day previous a group of monks had been fund-raising: asking alms from local villagers. So I readied some dollars just in case. But this monk turned out to be the brother of the SOC cook, and he was paying a family visit. Us tourists to Cambodia often forget that the monks come from everyday families and, rather than focus on religious thoughts 24 hours a day, are often simply wondering: “how’s my sister doing?”