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'A little piece of Thailand'
By PICHAYA FITTS
There, the 53-year-old woman from Thailand spends hours selecting produce common in her native cuisine but exotic to Westerners. When she finds what she wants, she buys in bulk. At home, she cleans the dirt from the veggies, bundles them up and refrigerates them. When Sunday arrives, Peters heads to Wat Mongkolratanaram, the only Thai temple in the bay area, to sell the produce to other Asians. That's how her weekend goes, as it has for the past three years. "Every week, I make about $100 in profit," said Peters, who introduces herself as Joy, her American name. "But I don't keep the money. I give it all to the temple." Peters' booth and others like it routinely draw Thai immigrants to Wat Mongkol, shorthand for a name that means Temple of Good Luck. They come to worship, have lunch and shop for produce and herbs that are often rare in American supermarkets -- galangal root, lemon grass and kafir lime leaves, to name a few. On occasions such as Thai New Year, which was celebrated Sunday, the temple takes on special significance. For more than two decades, Wat Mongkol has been a magnet for immigrants. Old hands recommend the temple to newcomers. While the market is a Sunday-only event, the temple is open daily. It offers comfort even to those may not come to worship, permitting them to mingle with other Asians and speak their native tongue. They eat Thai food -- cooked as it would be back home -- and relive the joy of being in Thailand though they are more than 10,000 miles away. The temple also appeals to Americans with a passion for Thai culture. They sit alongside Thais at picnic tables scattered around the 3.5-acre compound. On a recent Sunday, Don Lehmer sat with his girlfriend, Korean-born Mikey Chong, the two digging into a paper boat filled with pad Thai, stir-fried rice noodles. Chong, 33, loves the food. Lehmer, a retiree who spent four months golfing through Thailand last year, heard about the temple from the owner of a Thai restaurant in Sarasota. So about once a month, the 61-year-old American comes to Wat Mongkol to rekindle his Asian experience. "This is the way people are in Thailand: friendly and warm," said Lehmer. "It's like a little piece of Thailand." For Malee Puckly, an eighth-grade student at Brandon's Burnett Middle School, the temple is another way to taste grandma's cooking. Every Sunday, her Thai grandma, Chantana Smith, 61, comes to Wat Mongkol to cook noodles, raising about $500 a week for the temple. A bowl of noodles, mixed with bean sprouts and beef or Thai-style meatballs, costs $3 -- less than half what customers pay at regular Thai restaurants. "I like the food here," Malee said after she bought a pack of black sticky rice topped with layers of creamy Thai custard. At a glance, Wat Mongkol is far from the Buddhist temples traditionally seen in Thailand. There are no intricate decorations of gold leaf and glass mosaic. Absent the sign, "Welcome to the temple," or the tall Buddha, the one-story cinder block building might just resemble somebody's garage. But the compound, off Palm River Road along the south bank of Six Mile Creek, couldn't be more inviting. Visitors in search of peace and tranquility find gardens of palm trees and bushes. They also find free coffee and tea, a gesture that reminds Thais that temples at home feed the poor and the homeless. Flocks of hens and roosters roam freely, adding the rustic feel of a Thai village. It took years of planning and an intercontinental fund-raising campaign before the Thai immigrants in the bay area could have their own place of worship. The idea was born in 1979. Thai immigrants in Florida helped a California Thai community raise money for a temple -- in exchange for periodic visits to Florida by its monks. Back then, there were only nine Thai temples in the United States, compared with 103 today; zero in Florida, compared with four now. (Tampa, Kissimmee, Fort Walton Beach and Miami.) At each stop, the monks found hundreds of Thai immigrants. Many had been in the United States for nearly a decade without a place to worship. The turnout sparked talk of opening a Thai temple in the region. The bay area emerged as the best location. Over the next two years, Thai immigrants in Fort Walton Beach and Tampa tried to bring the plan to life. Tanapol Polpanich, an Asian grocer, launched a fund-raising campaign in Fort Walton Beach. Visuth Chinsomboon, owner of Thai Market grocery in South Tampa, did his part, too. Soon, immigrants in Miami and San Francisco joined in. The fund-raising campaign extended all the way to Bangkok, capital of Thailand. Early on, Chinsomboon opened his home to the California monks, who came to Tampa to help plan the temple and to perform services. In late 1981, planners found land on Palm River Road. Wat Mongkol began with one monk, Phramaha Chalaem Sroiwatee. Now there are six. The monks depend on donations for food and living expenses. The Sunday market raises about 40 percent of the temple's total revenues. A market and a church may be an uncommon marriage in the United States, but in Buddhist Thailand, they're almost inseparable. At Wat Mongkol, many temple goers are military spouses. Husbands have retired; children are off at school. Many are devoted Buddhists, who view fundraising as both a duty and a way to earn a higher place in the afterlife. They prepare and sell their own products, and donate profits to the temple. That's where Nongyao Peters came in. She and her husband, a retired Navy warrant officer, James Peters, moved to Tampa from Fort Bragg, N.C., about 10 years ago. A stay-at-home wife, she had few activities outside of house chores. Selling produce busies her weekends, she said. Noy Burdish tells a similar story. Her husband, retired Army Lt. Col. John Burdish, first read about the temple in a community newspaper. Cooking Pad Thai at a stall near Nongyao Peters, Noy Burdish said she couldn't be happier. She wipes sweat from her face, but smiles through the toils. "This is like being home for me," she said. -- The temple Wat Mongkolratanaram is at 5306 Palm River Road, off 50th Street, south of the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway. For more information, call (813) 621-1669.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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