TODAY

One feature in the month’s festival, the offering of kahtein robes for monks, is a row of triangular wooden structures gaily decorated with coloured paper and hung with packets of gifts, robes, towels, napkins, cups, patent medicine phials–all the things that the reverend monks might need. Such structures are called Pad-tha Trees, because all good things grow on them. In the month of Tazaungmon (November), go anywhere in town, market places, suburban quarters, streets and lanes you see them in clusters and groves.