[JayBee]

Originally Posted by Dodger

A story slightly related to topic. Gf & me was in the airport at Ubon and gad arrived early, there was a Thai Air flight going one hour before ours so i decided to give it a try and just nonchalantly board it, we got through the boarding proceedure without them noticing we had boarding cards for the later flight, went to the same seats as our tickets and how lucky they were empty on a pretty full plane, sitting next to the window was a monk,(this was why the seats were luckily empty because they had tried to keep him on his own) I motioned for gf to seat down because of my height I like the aisle seat, but she gave me the biggest look of fear and totally refused. As we sat down he put a cushion between me and him to stop our arms touching. So I asked gf why she had refused to sit in the middle seat and she explained that a thai girl cannot sit next to a monk, i asked what would have happened if she had been with a girlfriend and not me? and she replied that she would have had to have asked another male passenger to sit next to him. Then I asked why he had put the cushion between us and she told me because I could not touch him, so i explained that because of the width of the chairs and mine and his shoulder width we were actually touching shoulders above the cushion, to this information she looke deven more scared and told me to quickly move sideways. When they served us food, they only served him 4 glasses of drink (orange, water, milk and coke), she explained to me that a monk vcannot eat after 12, as the stewardess passed his tray across Im went to take it to pass it on to him and another look of fear was on the stewardesses face and my gf again, she then explained that as a falang i wasn't allowed to touch the tray his drink was on.
This is'nt a funny story just left me thinking wow whats all this about and how much more is there to learn about whats right and wrong with a monk? so Stiofanderry, best of luck mate, I am sure therefore that they will tolerate a few mistakes because how can any farang remember all the do's and dont's in one lesson.

I think a TG would never sit next to a monk on a plane, because they can never touch a monk(or vice versa). Strictly taboo. I didn't know that it applied to farangs, and I am not sure that it does in all cases.

What really does surprise me is that a female stewardess would hand a monk a drink or a tray. Normally, it is forbidden for a woman to hand anything to a monk. She would hand it to a man and then he would hand it to the monk. So, I would have thought that it would be more appropriate for her to hand it to you, then you hand it to him.

They must have special exceptions to the rules for when monks go on airplanes!