Chiang Mai - Dressed in flowers, finery and makeup, scores of boys were paraded around a temple in Thailand after having their heads shaved – a symbolic start to a centuries-old Shan monkhood ...

Dressed in flowers, finery and makeup, scores of boys were paraded around a temple in Thailand after having their heads shaved -- a symbolic start to a centuries-old Shan monkhood ordination ... tufts ...

tufts of hair falling onto a lotus leaf. "I've made this decision myself... I am glad and happy," said nine-year-old Donlaphat Lungta, whose parents migrated from Myanmar and was born in Thailand, ...

The Buddhist celebration is unique to the Shan people of northeastern Myanmar ... Monks ritually shaved more than 40 boys' heads with razors, tufts of hair falling onto lotus leaves.

The Buddhist celebration is unique to the Shan people of northeastern Myanmar, hundreds of thousands of whom have moved to Thailand during their country's decades of dictatorship and turmoil.

...The Flood Warning is extended for the following rivers in Texas... Rabbit Creek At Kilgore affecting Gregg County. For the Rabbit Creek...including Kilgore...Moderate flooding is forecast ...