The action came after the owner of a garden reported to police that, after doing alms rounds in the early afternoon, 18 monks from Wat Thalang were in the habit of disappearing into his garden. He was suspicious about what they were up to, he told officers.
Police arrived at the garden, close to the airport road. In a tin hut they found cooking utensils and a large number of empty alcohol bottles. Two of the 18 monks managed to escape, but the other 16 were rounded up and taken back to the wat.
There, the abbot, Promprapatsorn, headed the investigation into the behaviour of the monks, some of whom were apparently woozy from alcohol or drugs.
Police requested urine samples from them all. The “purple pee” results on five of the samples indicated the possible presence of drugs.
The monks said they had only been taking medication for illness, so the police took them to Thalang hospital to check their blood for narcotics. The results were positive, at which point the monks confessed to drug abuse and requested to be sent for drug rehab.
The abbot expelled the five from the monkhood. The other 11 were found not to have committed crimes or contravened the rules of the monkhood in any major way but, because they had been behaving “wrongly” he ordered them to return to their original temples in Isarn for training to correct their behaviour.
All 16 were from Isarn, the grilling revealed. They said they had traveled to Phuket because they could get good money from local people and tourists wanting to make merit. At home, they said, they had hardly any income.
The landlord waived the right to charge them for trespassing on his land.