Nai comes from a Ban Nok in Isaan. After his military service he boarded a bus to Pattaya like thousands of 20 year-olds before him. The beach city provided an easy life and he succumbed to the allure of its vices. Even the good are weak in Pattaya. Nai told his parents he worked in hotels and had convinced himself they actually believed him, until receiving a phone call from his father.

“You’re 25. It’s time for you to go to the temple.” His father was a stern man. Nai’s period in the temple paved the way for his parents’ entrance into the eternal circle after death. It was the way of life, but his father reinforced his statement by saying, “If you don’t go, you are no longer my son.”
  
Faced with this ultimatum, Nai resigned himself to entering a temple or tamboon not far from his home. No more beer. No more going out a night. No more meat. No more anything other than praying at the temple day after day for three months, but nai knew that wasn’t enough. He had been a bad boy.

“I think I go six months.” He told me while drinking Leo beer like he had a raging coal fire in his stomach.

“Six months.” Monks get to eat once a day. A meal at dawn like a condemned man and milk after the sun went down. Most of the day was spent praying and working for the temple.

In 1967 my girl friend and I had contemplated the religious life instead of having sex. She went to a nunnery and I ended up in a monastery. I lasted until my friend, Chuckie Manzi, bought a copy of Led Zeppelin’s first LP. DAZED AND CONFUZED at volume 10 introduced another god. The song had the same effect on my girlfriend. Our vows of celibacy had lasted a weekend.

“I can do six months.” Nai downed his beer and pour another full glass. “It’s for my family.”

His friends gave him 10 days. He went home and saved his head. His parents threw him a big party. I bought him half a pig with his ‘cousin’/ex-wife/girlfriend, Mint from Soi 6. That was 15 days ago and she calls him Pra now. A monk washed of his sins. At 55 I would probably have to stay a year or two. Some sins don’t wash off your soul so fast. Like all those years of self-abuse. At least I never went blind only near-sighted.