Across the street from my guesthouse there was a hill with a staircase, and the staircase's rails were figures of huge silver serpents, scales and all, with a giant menacing head and lots of little serpent heads coming out of its mouth. It led to a temple called Wat Ho Siang. One night I was curious about it so I walked to the top of the hill. Before reaching the top I saw a long stick swinging around until it disappeared below the horizon and out of sight. When I reached the top I saw a young monk, a boy, wearing only the bottom part of his robe, lying face down in the grass next to the stick. His friends were sitting on some steps on the same walkway I was on and started laughing when they saw me, a 17 year old myself, looking at him in wonderment. Finally he looked up to see why they were laughing, saw me, and darted off behind a building. Meanwhile a younger monk began to set a dry palm leaf on fire. The half-dressed monk returned to tie the leaf to his pole. He then stood on the bench and hoisted his torch up into a tree. After a few moments a Thai man and half his family came up the step behind me. When the monk saw them he abandoned his project and did a series of back rolls through the yard to join his giggling friends. The man, named Narong, explained to me that the boys were trying to smoke some bugs out of the tree so that it wouldn't die.
Then he invited me to sit in on the prayer session that he had come for. I had never been to a Buddhist prayer session before, so I said yes. We entered the dimly lit wat, buzzing with the drone of dragonflies attracted to the two bare lightbulbs, and sometimes they were stuck on their backs, buzzing because they were unable to fly away again. The head monk, the leader, came in and sat down on a cushion, facing the room with his back to the statue of Buddha. When he started to chant, the other monks, the boys that had been cutting up only moments ago, trickled in solemnly, sat down and joined in the chant. Soon the singing was full force with the deep voice of the leader shadowed by the higher ones of his pupils, creating a beautiful and mysterious song. After awhile the chant broke into two parts, with some resting their voices while the others kept at it. This gave the prayer the same effect as if I were coveing and uncovering my ears quickly, and it sounded really, really cool, a throbbing, bouncing melody. The drone of the prayer drowned the dragonfly noise, but they remained in the wat throughout, occasionally being helped up off their backs by the chanting monks.