The Breakfast Rhythm

It’s just past 4am and it’s chilly on the street corner. Rugged up, in anticipation, I peer down the main street of Lao’s Luang Prabang but the thick mist has built a wall that is obscuring everything beyond.
Each of the locals have set up a spot along the street, spreading out mats and sitting cross-legged, carefully arranging bowls of sticky rice around them. Each movement is done neatly and efficiently; the same routine that has become the daily norm and an integral part of religious life, as the monks are not allowed to prepare food themselves. Stray dogs of mixed breeds roam the street, jauntily trotting past seated locals.
Their chanting precedes the Monks, a disembodied projection from the mist and echoing down the main street. Our group of dozy observers is roused into an excited murmur. There is a flurry of unzipping of camera cases as they shuffle forward to see the first group of monks make their entrance.
They amble slowly down the street, a neat single file of smooth shaved heads, clasping large bronze alms bowls under one arm. The vibrant orange and yellow hue of their carefully draped robes more than compensates for the absent sun on this overcast morning. The robes have a diverse color spectrum of their own, some a brilliant carrot-bright tone, others a more muted darker hue. Yellow sashes adorn the waists of many, neatly clipping in the billowing material.
The neat line makes its way to the first seated local, who uncovering his pot, begins scooping rice into the first monk’s bowl. And so begins the rhythm of the breakfast; the tinny scrape of the spoon scooping out the rice, the dull plop as it thuds into the bowl, and the ongoing repetition of scoop, plop, scoop, plop!
Receiving a small portion from each, the monks are constantly moving, shuffling forward heads bowed, stooping to receive the alms, before straightening up again and trotting to the next. The ritual is both beautiful for its time-worn efficiency as well as its almost dance-like qualities, their constant stooping, bowing and straightening like steps that have been rehearsed every morning for hundreds of years.
Those serving the neat scoops of sticky rice don’t look up, perhaps partly out of respect but also because the intense speed of their scooping denies them time. And in turn, the monks pay little attention to the transfixed tourists on the opposite side of the street, with only a few of the very young monks staring curiously back at the onlookers.
Bowls laden with the day’s sustenance, the neat formation of orange ambles off, bare feet plodding softly down footpaths leading them back to one of the thirty-odd temples dotted around the town. Stomachs rumbling, we wander back to our hostel in search of breakfast, an entirely different form of ritual.