Скачать или смотреть Donation Technology at Egg Boy Temple, Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Thailand

Automatic floating lantern spinner at mega-Disney-temple Wat Chedi วัดเจดีย์ aka the Egg Boy Temple (âi-kài, ไอ้ไข่) in Nakhon Sri Thammarat province, Thailand (Google Entry featuring 39,130 photos and 11,710 reviews):

https://maps.app.goo.gl/JDT4UH3gEyhbQ...

Every single street of this town is lined with chicken and firecracker shops    • This Thai street has 1000,000% more cock   , each with more outrageous claims than the last: "Lucky Shop!" "rich Rich RICH!" "Just stop over at our shop and you will become rich!" and a few add on for good measure "Free toilets!" Shiny mirror-ball cocks and bus-sized signs are not enough: they need to resort to ultra-bright daylight flashing LED arrows to stand out.

The legend is that a temple boy named Egg (kài ไข่) disappeared mysteriously from this temple. In the temple there is an effigy of frail Egg Boy wearing sunglasses https://maps.app.goo.gl/D3PtnwZKcqdaW... and occasionally clothes and a beret https://maps.app.goo.gl/aAsCf9qxdGjUa... .

If you come to the temple to ask Egg Boy for something (correct lottery numbers, good test scores, good luck with women, fortune in your business) and your wish gets granted, you need to come back and purchase a chicken statue (of a value proportional to your gain) and return to the temple to แก้บน (gɛ̂ɛ-bon, fulfill your promise) by donating the chicken to Egg Boy.

I asked the temple staff what the story of Egg Boy has anything to do with the mass business of selling chicken statues. They responded that Egg Boy liked chickens. This connection seems to have been added later to facilitate commerce.

I asked what they do with all the chickens that people donate, because I really didn't see that many chickens installed around the temple (there were actually more statues of Ultraman, Iron Man, Spiderman, and soldiers aiming rifles https://maps.app.goo.gl/F4thcBBMwsxVL... than statues of chickens). They responded that they store all the donated chickens "over there" (but I didn't see any over there). Another semi-unbeliever Thai says there is a massive field of chicken statues on the edge of the compound, which they referred to as a "chicken graveyard." I didn't see that either. In Google Photos from 2018 and as late as Oct 2023 https://maps.app.goo.gl/7GhQPiMvyuG61... https://maps.app.goo.gl/UtWCzq5tc1xYK... https://maps.app.goo.gl/LZgwpiEnDQeHd... you can see there used to be a long row of chicken statues right out in view right in front to "prove" how many wishes had been granted, but no more. Perhaps they were stored away for the Songkran splashing festivities a few weeks earlier. But, on cynical days, one might also wonder if the chicken statues might have been recycled back to the endless shops. Some Thais assured me this would be unlucky, so surely is not the case.

Thousands and thousands of Thais believe in this legend and flood through the 400m x 240m compound in tour buses, taxis, and private cars from every province. There is a massive parking lot, shade area, vendor area, kid performers doing chicken dances complete with crowing sounds, and a circus fairgrounds of different donation contraptions in the giant new pagoda, which began construction 7 years ago, after the temple massively expanded by purchasing nearby land. The new pagoda utterly overshadows the original temple, which was razed according to one review from a sad Thai who had been coming to the temple for decades. There is a giant Buddha image still under construction in the pagoda, but they don't seem in a big hurry to complete it.

This is an entirely Thai affair. There is no English explanation anywhere and no attempt to welcome, or explain to, English-speaking guests. I was the only farang there and was safely ignored. The giant "Welcome" arch is written in Thai, Malay, and Chinese, but that's it for foreign languages. There are plaques in Thai describing the steps and ritual chants one needs to do when asking something of Egg Boy, and Thai staff on microphones describing all the different ways you can make merit before or after receiving your fortune from Egg Boy.

The many pilgrims need to wait in long lines some days. They perform the ritual and, seemingly just as important, get that all-important selfie in front of Egg Boy.

Other things I didn't see, but are visible in the Google pictures, include a massive firecracker demolition pile that reminded me of Idiocracy https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ygy1YbHtJJigh... https://maps.app.goo.gl/hbqMZBibxQHsG... (the town sells firecrackers in boxes of 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 explosions according to the magnitude of your benefit, and if that is to be believed then you must also believe they have logarithmic pricing) with a protective wall and smoke billowing out the top.