Sawasdee Khrup, TV Friends,

Late last night I ventured out to lock the gate and observed a long string going past my house, looping over telephone and power wires, and then disappearing down another soi.

Since frequent manifestations of quantum tunnelling and instantaneous entanglement of events faster than the speed of light are commonplace around here, I thought nothing of it, which was good to think, since we sleep better when thinking nothing.

But today, I went to the little shop of the Earth Mother to purchase the usual plaa too for Celestial Kitty, and some LactaSoy for moi/moi.

There's the string again : I can see now it goeth everywhere, loops under and over all kinds of wires; I look in three directions and can't see the end of it.

So I inquire of a man at EM's shop : "anee sai ben ary, Khrup ?."

"Sai sin" : he says : it's from our local Wat (which is a good 1.5 kilometers from my house).

Ahhh, we get it. It's a "tamboon," a ritual act of making merit.

We had seen before, years ago, at the special service at Wat Chet Yot for people who are "mentally disturbed" or "upset," the ritual running of a long string from the "primary" Buddha image (Phra Buddha) around the room, connecting everyone present, while a Monk (Phra) who had obviously mastered "circular breathing" kept up a non-stop Pali chant/blessing for over an hour : and seen the ritual running of string from a Buddha image in house-blessing ceremonies before; and, of course, personally, often have a sai sin around my own wrist (wear it until it rots away).

Will try and visit the local Wat in the next two days and see if I can know more about why this was done at this point in time.

Is your moo baan breaking out in strings ?

best, ~o:37;

I too have a similar sounding piece of string round our house which has been set at neck height for me when passing through our gate but, oddly enough, the rest of the family can pass under without ducking.

Apparently it is for keeping us 'safe' and is related to the small piece of gold leaf that the mother in law nicked from the local wat and stuck on the inside of our cars windscreen that makes the baby seat I bought for our 6 month old totally superfluous and a'foolish waste of money'.

Sorry, Im struggling with this one. How is this connected with food? :s

Sorry, Im struggling with this one. How is this connected with food? :s

Interesting story, thanks.