Capitalist Enlightenment

I met my sister in Chiang Mai and we are currently making our way down south towards Cambodia. Along the way, we stopped in Sukhothai to explore the temples and various historic watts. After a few hours of giant buddhas we stumbled upon a the site of the oldest gold buddha image in thailand. A monk greeted us and proceeded to take us into the temple. He spoke no english and told us in thai the story of the walking, sleeping and sitting buddhas. We were in awe of this great opportunity to speak with a monk and trying our best to not disrespect him or the temple. However, after about 15 minutes things started to get strange. He started to shower us in braclets and necklaces. Then when I put a donation into the donation box he took out his wallet to what we thought was show us foreign money to display where we were from. But when we were about to leave it seemed he was upset at my donation. Through body language it was clear he wanted us to give him the money and in our currency, not in the donation box. He proceeded to show us how much the braclets cost and what we should be giving him so that he could eat, etc. I am still at a loss of what to make of this situation. I hope that this was a cultural error and that the bad feeling in my stomache is a misinterpretation of what was happening in that temple. In buddhist culture materialism is seen as meaningless and the path the ultimate enlightenment is not paved in gold, but in the act of good towards all of earths creatures. Perhaps it is the presence of westerners that has created a pocket of greed into thai culture. I often feel like I am just a walking money sign to some people and then there are the others that have nothing and are willing to share their meal and the clothes off of their backs. When my sister and I left the temple after giving the 'monk' the money he wanted we got onto our bikes quickly and got out onto the main road without saying a word. When we looked back we saw the monk smoking a cigarette... did he mean nothing when he explained to us in thai the lessons of the walking budda? I don't think I will be able to fully grasp just what happened in that temple. Either way its just plain bad karma.