Sharp-tongued soothsayer makes clients cringe

Fortune teller (R) in Phnom Penh

Private matters become public fodder as crowds flock to fortune teller

BY TRACEY SHELTON
Phnom Penh Post, Issue 17 / 03, February 8 - 21, 2008

Siem Reap – Each morning at dawn, while sleepy tourists gather to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat, in the nearby village of Bakong a different kind of a local crowd begins gathering at the doorstep of a humble village home.

At 9am the soothsayer Per Chouck So emerges from behind a thin curtain and sits on a cushion before a Buddhist shine. By this time a crowd of more than three dozen sits patiently watching, each with a number and a bowl of flowers and incense, as they wait their turn for the fortune teller.

Now age 39, Chouck So’s powers of foresight have been renowned throughout the Kingdom since she first began her career as a seven-year-old.

“People have always come to me for advice and healing since I was very young,” she says. “I can see the truth about people. The gods provide this knowledge.”

The first client on a recent February morning is a respectable looking middle-aged man who stands and lights his incense sticks. Immediately Chouck So begins to loudly describe the man’s girlfriends while the onlookers listen in, snickering at his embarrassment, and his wife listens intently.

Chouck So goes on to say the man is a hopeless gambler and will soon lose his wife if he does not change his ways. She hands his gift of money back to him, urging him to spend it wisely and warning that unless he shapes up there will not be a lot more cash coming his way. He leaves in shame, his wife in tow as the unfazed Chouck So resumes meditation in preparation for her next revelation.

The next client is a young woman with a troubled love life. Chouck So informs the conservative Khmer crowd that the woman has already had two husbands and is now carrying a baby of a third man. She goes on to say that despite some mistakes, she is a good and kind person and that the father of the child is a good man. Chouck So advises her that if they marry she will find happiness. The woman leaves smiling.

About 70 people a day come from around the country to have their fortunes told by this charismatic soothsayer who is famous not only for her insight, but for her public satire and an uncanny ability to describe hidden birthmarks and intimate body parts of her clients with accurate precision.

Part of her appeal is her insistence on only meeting clients in the open room where anyone present can listen in. “I want them to feel ashamed enough to change and do something good,” she explains. “They know what I say is true.”

Although she offers her advice for free to anyone, visitors often bring gifts of all sorts. One pleased client gave her a car now parked in the driveway of the home where she lives with her husband, five children, and extended family.

Chouck So says she can sense when people offer more than they can afford and when that happens she gives back the gifts. “Sometimes poor families borrow money and travel a long way to come here. If I accept their gift, how can they pay that money back to the lender?”

The walls of the home are decorated with photos of herself with clients. There are photos of various Cambodian officials, including Prime Minister Hun Sen. But she has no interest in who the people are, she says. She takes people as they come, but says that sometimes officials show up late at night with dozens of bodyguards so no one is present to hear what is said. Most enquire about land or business, she says.

“Some people travel a long way to see me even though they don’t believe in fortune tellers – like that man,” she says, pointing at a man in the crowd named Som Pheap.

Pheap confesses that it’s true he doesn’t believe in fortune tellers but had traveled from Kompong Cham at the urging of his wife.

“She is the good one for sure,” says Kao Nimol, a young woman from Phnom Penh who came to visit Chouck So. She says Chouck So accurately described her family life and many personal issues including the details of a personal prayer to Buddha regarding her older sister.

Nimol says that Chouck So is unusual because she often refuses to accept money from clients. “Other fortune tellers say whatever they think will make you happy and then ask for your money, but they don’t really know anything,” she says. “If she feels something not good, she will say it. She doesn’t care what people think.”

Chouck So, who often spends ten hours a day with clients, says she tells fortunes because she wants to help people. She also believes that her powers of foresight will carry over into her next life.

But the work can be difficult. “I want people to be happy. But if I know something bad I have to tell them the truth,” she says. “The truth can help them prepare.”

Christmas in Cambodia is a dangerous, exhilarating time

Saturday, December 29, 2007
By June Seabaugh
Southeast Missourian (USA)

Editor's note: June Seabaugh is an occasional columnist for the Southeast Missourian. She is from the area but is currently teaching English in Cambodia.

It's two days after Christmas, and I think I'd like to tell you about a "cool event" among my holiday memories this year. Then I'll try to share about one of my student's lives so you can understand why I'm so excited to be here.

On Christmas Eve I went caroling with the boys and girls from the Asian Hope orphanages. Since we're in Cambodia, we definitely were not caroling on the streets. So 25 of us squeezed into a school van. We headed to the houses of some of the missionaries whose children attend my school. At each house they unlocked their security gates and we sang our medley of songs with children perched in palm trees in 90-degree heat. At one house the old van's side door wouldn't open, and we all climbed over seats to exit the back hatch door. What a hoot!

That was wonderfully spiritual for me, but I think the highlight of the evening was not so spiritual; it was incredibly patriotic for me. After we finished our house caroling, the girls' orphanage supervisors wanted me to get to see the American embassy since it was lit up for Christmas. We dropped off the boys (who'd already seen the display) and went to the U.S. Embassy.

I really believe that they'd managed to put a light bulb on every blade of grass, every palm leaf, and every edge of every roof. No, there was no manger or Nativity scene, no baby Jesus or anything religious, but America was proud of the holiday enough to have lighted Santas, sleighs, poinsettias, snowmen, reindeer, two-story trees and just plain ol' palm trees lit in myriad colors. Yeah, there were guards in case terrorists took a notion to destroy it, but it was kind of fun to see America enjoying its display of power and wealth.

No other embassy put out a single string of lights, not Canadian, British, European or Australian. But America celebrated Christmas in Cambodia. Our little group found a missionary family from our school and we sang our little hearts out in Christmas carols under the Cambodian sky. I laughed that I ought to be singing "I'm Proud to Be an American," but I still like living on Earth too much to do that here.

My Canadian friends razzed me about my tax dollars being burned. Maybe we're stupid to do something so outlandishly extravagant, but I was proud of us. I would have been happier to see a manger scene, but I still sang myself happy. I didn't have my family around me, but I had America's lights and our group's songs raised to worship our Savior -- and I had fun!

And now for the reason I'm here: It's to share the gospel with people like Srey*, one of my seniors in high school. When Srey was 5, she lived among rice fields with her parents, a younger sister, Kiri*, and a baby brother. Srey's mother had TB. Srey remembers that one day her father came home from gambling again, and her mother cried to him that she would rather be dead. An hour or so later two men came, shot at Srey's dad and missed, but killed her mother. Srey and Kiri were taken to live with their uncle and his family. She has not seen her father or brother since then and doesn't know where they are.

After a year of living with their uncle's family (where they were miserably abused) at the edge of Phnom Penh, the Funcinpec party tried to take over the government. As their house burned, Srey, Kiri and their uncle's family ran to take shelter in a Chinese man's house. Bullets whizzed by and bombs exploded around them. About 50 people hid there for two days, but one night soldiers from the Cambodian People's Party came and ordered them to leave, saying there were spies among them. That's when the miracle happened that changed Srey's life.

A new neighborhood woman from another country had been telling her neighbors about Jesus. Srey prayed to him that night as she listened to the bullets and bombs going off, smelled the smoke of burning buildings and watched the two neighboring gas stations explode. She prayed, and she remembers stepping on a grenade as she walked. She says she saw it, but didn't have time to stop. She felt it under her foot, but it didn't go off. She knows she received a miracle.

Later, the neighbor found the two sisters and adopted them, along with four other Cambodian children, before the adoption laws in Cambodia changed in 2004 and essentially stopped Westerners from adopting Cambodian children. Two days before the law changed, the adoptions were finalized. Because her mom is from another country, Srey will attend college there next year. She will study accounting.

By the way, Srey's hard-praying Christian family sees a lot of miracles. Four years ago the children in the family didn't want their mother to take in a baby whose parents had died of AIDS and who also was dying of AIDS. They just didn't want to face watching another child die. But, in Srey's simple words, "We could not ignore him."

Today he's one of their adopted children, and the tests during 2007 have all come back negative for HIV/AIDS. He's a happy, healthy 4-year-old.

These are the children I teach. And Srey's mother is one of the many missionaries whose children I teach. I get to hear their miracle stories and be a part of their miraculous lives, and I realize each day how miraculous life is for each one of us.

I pray that you are enjoying the blessings of Christmas as you consider the miraculous birth of our Savior. And I pray that you appreciate the love of God who gave you the miracle of life and then offers the miracle of eternal life.

* Names were changed to protect the girls.