Busted in Sri Lanka - Vietnam's 'Barefoot Monk' needs the right visa.

GRUMPY OLD VIETNAM HAND.

Say, everyone, I really do need to update you on what’s happened to that Vietnamese Buddhist Barefoot Monk pilgrimage to India who couldn’t get across war-torn Myanmar from Thailand back in early March, his visa was running out and so - wrong way! - Thích (Venerable) Minh Tuệ’s and his entourage of fellow monks & hangers-on hopped an express bus down to the Malaysian border and everything turned into a real fiasco right as Ramadan began.

Followed by now-gasping (and half-broke) Vietnamese YouTubers who could barely keep up, the quiet-spoken monk resumed his walk, now down the Malay Peninsula to nobody knew where any more, all gist for endless Vietnamese language social media chatter and viewers lashing out constantly at the guy who’d replaced Bau and was now running the show.

Watching all this on YouTube beside my devoted wife Kim-Dung, I kept screaming ‘wrong way!’ Why aren’t they going to Penang and catching a dhow to India just like travellers & pilgrims of old? In predominantly Muslim Malaysia, it was now Ramadan. But that was fine as the Barefoot Monk only eats once a day anyway. Food donations came from local Chinese, expat and tourist Vietnamese.

Earlier, I’d counted on Radio Free Asia (RFA), and an affiliated on-line publication, for the occasional English-language report to back up what I was watching on Vietnamese-language YouTube channels since the Barefoot Monk walked out of Vietnam’s Central Highlands December, through Laos and across the Mekong River into Thailand and that long walk up to the border with Myanmar.

But then, Trump shut funding down for RFA, just like the Voice of America (VOA), and nobody was covering the story anymore with their website saying: On March 15, the U.S. administration terminated funding for Radio Free Asia, so we are now operating with fewer staff. We are still providing limited news updates on our website and social media. Thanks for your continuing support and for trusting in RFA.

And so the monk’s journey has remained just a ‘social media sensation’ with not even local media coverage along the way. On YouTube, speculation soared on where they were going. All the way to Singapore? And then perhaps refugee asylum request to Australia? (He’s certainly got grounds after the way Vietnamese authorities have treated him - and he’d be welcome here!)

By now, Minh Tuệ had more than 30 other similarly dressed monks tagging along and organisers struggling just to keep them fed. Then one day, with never any maps to show YouTube viewers where the group was, they all got on a ferry across the Strait of Malacca to Indonesia. But it was the wrong island. Finally, they got onto larger Sumatra and resumed walking. (And still the wrong way.)

Then, out of nowhere as I was a bit distracted doing other things, the entire group was at Singapore’s Changi Airport - and what a sight that was in their colourful robes wandering around the terminal - and onto a flight to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka and admittedly a very Buddhist country. (But still, why not a direct flight to Bihar in India where Buddhism began around 5th - 4th century BCE?) Sigh!

But while strongly Buddhist, Sri Lanka has hardly been an easy visit for the monk and his entourage. Unlike similarly Theravada Buddhist Thailand, for example, there is no tradition of street begging in the country and the Barefoot Monk prefers sleeping rough and not in temples and monasteries.

Holed up in one monastery, YouTubers wondered if they’d even be allowed to walk or not? And me, where were they headed anyway? The northern tip of the island and across to India? Now swollen to over 30 monks, they finally headed out into bright and lush countryside northeast of Colombo and resumed walking.

And then a couple days ago, RFA finally provided an update and reported the monk’s running into some unexpected opposition - and from a fellow monk. A local Sri Lankan monk refused to provide his temple’s hospitality after receiving a supposed letter from Thich Nhat Tu, a representative of the state-backed Vietnam Buddhist Sangha in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) – or religious association - to the Sri Lankan Sangha, that Minh o justify his demand that Minh Tuệ is now a real monk. (And assuming the letter is genuine, why? - especially given Hanoi’s oversight of all religions in Vietnam? He’s outa’ here.)

But then, as he’s explaining in the above photo after the police showed up, he has never claimed to be an ordained monk, although he did study all the teachings, knows them well and tries to follow them. He considers himself just an ordinary person doing his own thing wandering around the country for years - and that’s also why he became so popular back in his home country of Vietnam and essentially driven out.

Still, the Barefoot Monk is clearly a bit too hard for Sri Lankan authorities who stopped the walk yesterday with a police officer waving the letter and declaring that they cannot use their tourist visas to walk around the country. (Tourists must just do tourist things, apparently. Presumably just bus tours & beaches.) They apparently need a special permit from Immigration to continue.

So the day ended with the monk and his entourage on one more bus trip and into a secluded Buddhist temple with no YouTubers allowed while confused as ever organisers sort out the paperwork.

(To be continued…hopefully.)