Saturday, February 02, 2008

Prayer Machines, No Whammies!

This is our 3rd time in Thailand and it won't be the last. We're spending a week in the northernmost province of Chiang Mai. We visited an orchid farm and went into a cave in the highest limestone mountain in Thailand that was a temporary shelter for the Burmese army during the war. All that was only mildly interesting compared to the small temple sitting outside the cave that had prayer machines. That's right, prayer machines! With their flashing red lights you could see them from the parking lot. There were eight Vegas style slot machines and a weekday Buddha in each. Wednesday gets two for some reason; one for the day and another for the evening. Each of the 8 boxes had slots for the offerings. Sadly there were no levers to pull but wow, this was 'Lord of Light' put to action. I knew the book's idea of prayer machines would catch on sooner or later. It was too good to pass up for any entrepreneurial religion.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm a little surprised that they don't have prayer machines at those Christian revival events in stadiums and such. Then again, maybe they do.