A Monk, a Meal and a Car

Yunnan, China. My pre-conceived notions of a monk is a stoic, gentle, bald guy who eschews the temptation of modern greed and chants "oh mi tofu" all day. They don't eat meat because Buddhism espouses the idea of reincarnation (that extra crispy colonel's original recipe might really be the colonel himself). In fact, traditionally, monks are supposed to beg for their supper. Sitting in the picturesque old city of Lijiang I saw three young monks walk up to the street food lady and order 3 hot dogs on a stick, 3 yak skewers and 3 chicken wings. Ali, ever the optimist, thinks maybe the food is for someone else but given the lip smacking and the grease stains, I'm pretty sure they just ate Grandpapa.

Then, when leaving the Songzanlin Monastery (home to 600 tibetan monks), we ran into monks making the daily morning delivery of goods.... in a Hummer (H2 to be exact). Even the pope-mobile is only made by Ford Motor Company.

If someone shows up on Oprah claiming to be love-child of the Dalai Lama, I'm converting. (Yes I know I'm a practicing Atheist but the only places of worship I've every honored are buddhist temples so that brings my heathen ass halfway to nirvana by my books).