Religion

If you visit temples or religious places during your trip to Thailand, you need to make sure you follow the guidelines listed below :

• Make sure you are ¨appropriately dressed〃. Your clothes should be neat and you couldnˇt wear shorts or shirts with no sleaves.
  
  
• Take off your shoes! You can wear shoes while walking around the compound of a Buddhist temple but not inside the chapel where the main Buddha image is kept.
  
  
• In a Muslim mosque, women should be fully covered wearing trousers or a long skirt, a long-sleeved buttoned to the neck and a scarf over the hair. Men should wear hats. You must remove your shoes before entering the mosque and not enter if there is a religious cermony taking place.
  
  
• Buddhist priests cannot touch or to be touched by a woman, neither can they accept anything that is handed to them by a woman. If a woman wants to give anything to a or novice, she must first give it to a man, who can then present it to the monk. Alternatively, the monk will put down a saffron robe or handkerchief where the woman can place the object she want to give. When giving alms, the food and flowers are placed into the monkˇs bowl.
  
  
• All images of Buddha are sacred regardless of their size. It is therefore inappropriate do anything that might show a lack of respect such as sit on an image or in some case photograph it.