From the People's Offerings, A Feast of a Breakfast For a Studious Monk

Saffron-robed Buddhist monks sit in rows on the floor to eat food brought by the faithful to Phnom Penh's Wat Ounalom complex. (By Mary Jordan -- The Washington Post)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

As the sun rose over the Mekong River, Senly Lim walked to breakfast along a path used by monks for more than 500 years.

At 6:30 a.m., neighbors carrying white rice, fried noodles and coconuts had begun arriving, leaving food for him and 400 other saffron-robed monks. After rising in the pre-dawn darkness, Lim had been praying and readying for the morning feast since 4 a.m.

According to Buddhist tradition, monks do not eat after noon and rely for their food on offerings brought by the faithful.

"There is plenty to eat now," said Lim, 30, referring to the 15-day Festival of the Dead that ends Thursday. Cambodians give food to monks as a way of honoring deceased parents and other relatives. So in the early morning hours of these hot, humid October days, the 4,000 pagodas dotting this nation of 14 million are packed with people leaving offerings.

In the countryside, where customs last longer, many older people flock to Buddhist temples to be near ancestors whose souls, they believe, come to the houses of worship seeking living relatives at this time of year.

Lim, having fasted for more than 18 hours, happily sat cross-legged on the floor of his temple's dining hall, in front of a dozen bowls filled with rice porridge, black-speckled dragon fruit, fish soup, coconut juice and more. Hundreds of other monks sat alongside him on bamboo mats, in straight rows.

Even though they were packed so closely, few spoke as they began to eat. The sound of the ubiquitous motorbikes in the streets broke the silence. So did the cry of a baby in the crowd of homeless people gathering at the door. The smells of tropical poverty -- uncollected trash, sugary concoctions cooking in the streets -- wafted in.

Donors, mostly women, took off their shoes and entered the colorful room inside the 15th-century Wat Ounalom complex, a collection of ornate buildings along the riverfront near where the Tonle Sap River meets the Mekong.

"It is a way of honoring our ancestors," said Phany Sum, 34, a mother of four, as she tossed handfuls of uncooked rice into a six-foot-square blue wooden box at the back of the dining hall. The giant box now had a two-foot-high pile of rice in it. In the leaner days to come, when the monsoons kick in and fewer people bring offerings, this stockpile will be stretched to provide the monks' breakfasts.

At 7 a.m., Lim and the others, unable to eat more, stood up and filed out of the once-beautiful dining hall, its water-stained walls in sore need of fresh paint. As the monks left, a uniformed guard waved in the homeless -- mostly children -- to finish up the plentiful leftovers.

The hall is part of a complex that is home to monks ages 16 to 80. They move in near-silence around the towering gold-leaf temple at the compound's heart and an array of smaller buildings, including No. 20, a three-story French colonial structure where Lim sleeps in a single bunk.