Carnival Games for Buddha

Next to some people praying, there is a small engine that whizzes and coughs its way loudly through its cycle.  Throughout the day, it turns and moves its various parts as they squeak and churn their way around and around, like an old man's knees.  The end purpose of this machine is not to power the fans; in fact the engine makes the room hotter.  It did not generate electricity for lights or power a water pump for a fountain.  In fact, it's sole purpose was to move a small temple back-and-forth over a churning, metal sea.

As it was explained to me, there is a spirit of the sea, which helps out seafarers  when they get in trouble in the open waters.  Or maybe it sinks their ships?  Or both?  I couldn't understand the explanation clearly, as it was coming from the mouth of a nearly-toothless 70 year-old man chomping on betel nuts, but I did understand the point that there is a spirit in the ocean.  In any case, the temple in the ocean represents whatever side is the good side, either fighting with or working against the spirit.  And this, we find out, is the target we need to hit.  More specifically, we needed to throw small folded bills into the bowl attached to the front of the moving temple.

So, we exchange 200 kyat (about $.12) for 2 plates of folded 20 kyat notes and start tossing.  It's actually harder than it looks but not because of the movement of the small temple.  It may come as a surprise to you, but folded bills are not the best object in the world to try to fly in a straight trajectory.  Golf balls and arrows, yes.  Crumpled-up old bills that smell like moth balls, not so much.


We're finally able to get a couple of notes in the moving bowl, cheating a bit by leaning forward as much as possible, then throwing fiercely.  We see that there are a couple of kids watching us, so we give them a couple of the notes to throw, which they do with much enthusiasm, even though the accuracy is a bit lacking.  But at their age, it's just about showing that you can throw, not so much about the end results.

In the end, we end up by getting maybe 60 kyat in the target, and buying 300 kyat worth of projectiles.  And it was sure a whole lot more fun than just putting donation money in a box.  Little did we know that in another temple nearby, they had a different machine, this time with multiple bowls and with a turning motion instead of a side-to-side!  That's too irresistible.

Out comes the wallet as I pull out 200 more kyat...