Monks, monks, monks. What can I say, WE LOVE MONKS! We've seen monks walking down the street, monks on a bike, monks in the back of a truck, and monks riding motorcycles. There have been monks with umbrellas, monks crossing bridges, monks climbing trees, and even monks pushing eachother in a wheel barrel. Call us crazy, but every monk sighting is exciting. It's like seeing an endangered species for the first time, except there certainly is no shortage of monks in SE Aisa as we see them practically everywhere we go. But seeing a monk never grows old and we just can't get enough.

I guess then, the question arises, why are we so monk obsessed? Well, first of all, their bright orange robes paired against their olive skin makes for a beautiful contrast. In addition, monks are always friendly and have some of the best smiles we've ever seen (which they often seem eager to share). And lastly, monks are often excited to practice their English so we've had some fabulous monks conversations. But I think what keeps us infatuated with monks is our inability to take the perfect monk photo. It's not like we don't get enough opportunities to take photos either because as we said monks are everywhere. And in reality, we attempt to take lots of photos of monks. Sometimes we decide against it figuring that we don't want to be too intrusive and other times to be less intrusive we go on a co-vert monk picture taking operations. These missions often involve Adam or I posing in front of some random non-picturesque statue that is close to a monk and having our picture taken. We've even gotten a little more creative (or perhaps more paparazzi-like in our obsession) popping out from behind trees or flower planters to capture the perfect monk shot. The problem is that on more than one occasion we haven't been so sly and have flat out been caught by the monk, leaving us looking and feeling super ridiculous in the process. Nothing to make you feel like a complete moron than pissing off a monk.

But the ultimate high comes in capturing a covert photo and realizing you may have actually gotten "it" this time. The only problem is that this feeling is often followed by disapointment as you emerge from your hiding spot only to realize that you have yet another blurry pic of a monk to add to your collection. So here we are, six months into our Asia leg of the trip, lots of amazing monk sightings, but very little to show for it. In retrospect, I guess that's not so bad. If getting that oh so perfect monk shot was easy then everyone would have one and our monk love affair would have been short lived. Afterall, it's the things that are hardest to obtain that we value the most.