Word: chaiyaphum
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...robes, but they're not monks, says Thongdee Hawnjahn, a local housewife. "They make a lot of money begging, but it's wrong," she says. According to Thongdee, a bogus monk can net as much as $2,250 a month. Most fake monks come from villages like this in Chaiyaphum province in the poor northeast, and "poverty is what drives them to do it," says Sanitsuda Ekachai, a religion writer for the Bangkok Post. Some villages knowingly use bogus monks for ceremonies, she says, because, as many real monks gravitate to larger temples in big cities, there is a shortage...
...Charoen Atipalow has experienced this firsthand. Collared near Bangkok's Chatuchak market on suspicion of being a bogus monk, he is interrogated at a nearby temple by its abbot, Phra Thai Thammarat, and Phra Khrusri Pattanakhun, chief of the monk police. He insists he's a real monk from Chaiyaphum. But when Phra Khrusri calls a few of Charoen's supposed temples, no one will vouch for him. Rather than turn him over to the two waiting policemen, the abbot decides Charoen should be disrobed and expelled for improper begging. The legal penalty is only $4.50 for the first offense...
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