Anchor's "healing powers" draw Cambodian pilgrims

Feb 14, 2012
DPA

Phnom Penh - A 19th century ship's anchor has become a draw for Cambodian pilgrims who believe it has healing powers, local media reported Tuesday.

The 2.5-metre-long anchor, inscribed with the date 1883, was bought from a local fisherman by 43-year-old Chan Vanna last week, the Cambodia Daily reported. She claims the object is magical and that a mysterious pain in her arm disappeared after she prayed to it.

The anchor is now being kept in the capital's Prachum Sakor pagoda and is attracting up to 200 worshippers a day, the newspaper said.

Cambodia is familiar with ghosts

Analysis: By 10 p.m. the night of the stampede, there were too many people. Far too many people.

November 23, 2010

By Terry McCoy

Special to GlobalPost

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia is a country of ghosts and superstition. Don’t go out at night, they say in the countryside — ghosts. Always live with other people, others say — ghosts. Did you hear the crying last night in the quiet? Ghosts.

Every year in my high school classes in provincial Cambodia I ask my students to rank their greatest fears, and ghosts, despite nagging concerns for HIV, cancer and leeches, always creeps to the top of the list. At first I found this amusing. Now, I get it.

Every single person in this country has been touched by the egalitarian-driven genocide that killed 2 million people between 1975 and 1979. Every single person you see here lost someone during the Khmer Rouge and the apparitions linger and linger. Ghosts.

Now, more wraiths have come for one of Cambodia’s last remaining havens safe from the past: celebration. On Monday night, during the country’s raucous Water Festival in Phnom Penh, which swelled the city’s population from 2 million people to 5 million, nearly 400 people were crushed to death while trying to cross a narrow bridge connecting a small island in the Bassac River.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has called it the worst disaster to beset the country since the Khmer Rouge, personally pledging 5 million riel ($1,250) to the families of the dead.

It’s rumored this country has the most holidays in the world and a glance at the calendar — Constitution Day, Coronation Day, Royal Ploughing Ceremony Day — gives some weight to that claim. They are a time for Cambodians to live it up and forget the past, the poverty, the days slogging behind a water buffalo or inside a garment factory. There’s a sense among most Khmer that says: We lived through hell and so what if we want our holidays long, loud and plentiful?

Monday night’s disaster, however, is a sober reminder that nothing in this genocide-ravaged, impoverished country is safe from tragedy. Cast its lot with the Haitis of the world. A vibrant people ridden by terrible luck yet again.

“This will be a shadow over every boat festival, and it will happen during the water festival next year,” said Youk Chhang, Director of Cambodia’s Documentation Center, which tracks the country’s history. “What happened [Monday] night will have people more cautious. ... This was unexpected. Everyone thought this holiday would be safe.”

I didn’t see the stampede Monday night, though I was in the capital for Water Festival. Phnom Penh is a city that definitely sleeps, but at 10 p.m. Monday night when I finally chose my way home, the streets still teemed with open-shirted Khmer, teeny-bop stands and motorcycles.

Around that time, right when I was deciding I had better get off the streets, a nervous energy began to emerge out of the chaos. All day, everyone had smiled. But as the night dragged itself deeper, the smiles disappeared. By 10 p.m., everyone looked as though they had the same thought as I did. There were too many people. Far too many people.

It’s still unclear what started the stampede that crushed hundreds to death and sent hundreds more to the hospital. But almost all reports agree that something sparked a massive panic on Diamond Island that propelled thousands of people to try and cross a two-lane bridge at the same time. They were scared of something.

All day Tuesday, images of the dead and dying bombarded anyone watching Khmer television, and even international attention has turned its eye to this often-forgotten country sandwiched between a pair of famous neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam. But soon, despite the tragedy of Monday night, the international community will become bored and the ghosts will be left to the Khmer alone.

And if there’s anything Cambodia has become familiar with, it’s ghosts.

Magic tattoo business is slow in Cambodia

"Magic tattoos make me feel more confident," says heavyweight kickboxing champ Eh Phuthong, training at his club just outside Phnom Penh. (Lianne Milton / For The Times)
Au Phuthong, 29, left, Eh's younger brother, also has magic tattoos. (Lianne Milton / For The Times)

May 19, 2010
By Mark Magnier
Los Angeles Times (California, USA)
Reporting from Phnom Sruoch, Cambodia

Peace has not been kind to practitioners of the 2,000-year-old tradition, which holds that magic tattoos can make you invisible, divert bullets and boost your net worth.

In a haze of incense, clients approach Kol Sambo and humbly request his help, sometimes seeking rush jobs for an imminent crisis. He listens and asks why they require added force. If he thinks they'll abuse the power, he turns them down "in a nice way."

Kol is a practitioner of magic tattoos, a 2,000-year-old tradition some call the "soul of the nation." They can make you invisible, divert bullets and boost your net worth, he says, but only if you believe.

The 50-year-old has traveled the Cambodian countryside for the better part of two decades decorating people's bodies with gods, geometric patterns, supernatural creatures and characters in Sanskrit and Pali, the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism.

Some images appear to move as the wearer's muscles ripple; on others, rounded Khmer script, softened by age, appears to melt as the lines grow fuzzier.

Kol says most clients prefer the more efficient made-in-China tattoo machine he bought a few years back, but, if asked, he still will use the traditional method to ink the skin: two or three sewing needles tied together.

Once applied, by whatever method, a tattoo must be blessed to activate its supernatural powers.

There are "fake" magic tattooists out there, Kol says disdainfully. He was born with the talent, he says, and honed it after becoming a monk and retreating into the mountains to meditate, ponder visions and study ancient texts under a spiritual master.

Grateful clients will periodically return, having survived a war or two, and offer thanks.

Chan Ngeuy, 60, a rail worker who was a soldier during the 1970s, took off his shirt to reveal a line of lacy symbols running the width of his chest, down the outside of his arms and the length of his back bracketing his spinal cord.

"I was shot at, but the bullet missed," he says. "My tattoo made all the difference."

Peace, however, as welcome as it may be to Cambodians after decades of bloodshed, is not a friend of the magic tattoo business.

"During wartime, everyone wants one," says Kong Taing Im, 38, a store owner visiting Kol hoping to safeguard her grandchildren's future. "Without war, mostly gangsters want them."

Nowadays, a tradition that migrated from India centuries ago and endured through numerous Cambodian wars and rulers is being chipped away by technology and an education system that encourages people to be literal-minded, says Miech Ponn, advisor on mores and customs at Phnom Penh's Buddhist Institute.

"Traditional tattoo artists are very few these days," the scholar says. "It's like a living museum."

This spread of modern skepticism is rather shortsighted, argues Cambodian heavyweight kickboxing champion Eh Phuthong, a national hero who credits the supernatural imagery spreading over his muscular body and onto his right fist for his winning record.

"Magic tattoos make me feel more confident, focused, allow me to punch harder and avoid my opponent's blows," Eh says, sporting a phoenix, a symbol of rebirth; the Hanuman monkey king, a force of life, agility and learning; and Vishnu god imagery, meant to provide strength. "They really work."

But even Eh says he's getting more snickers lately from young boxers who shun a practice once considered de rigueur for up-and-coming fighters.

Cambodia's few remaining magic tattoo artists these days tend to work in rural areas, where superstition is enduring, education less common and medical care limited.

Believers say the indelible marks, favored by soldiers, boxers and businessmen, ward off evil. They've also been something of a dead giveaway. During the mid-1970s Khmer Rouge reign of terror, when 2 million people died, the brutal regime targeted anyone who had been associated with the ousted government, many of whom were posing as farmers.

"Not many men with magic tattoos survived," Miech says. "If you had one, you were probably a soldier from the old regime and promptly executed."

It's not enough to simply get a magic tattoo. You must also tend its power. "It's like a mobile phone," says Chan Trea, 46, one of the few magic tattooists still operating in bustling Phnom Penh. "Without maintenance, it won't work."

To keep a tattoo's power, one should shun adultery, alcohol, insulting opponents while fighting them or eating star fruit.

Star fruit?

"Since ancient days, it's well known that people with tattoos or talismans should not consume this fruit," he says. "If it wasn't true, the warning wouldn't last so long."

These days, Chan Trea supplements his income with fashion tattoos.

"If I was only doing magic tattoos, I'd go broke," he says, leaning on the battered dentist chair his customers settle into for their needling sessions.

Magic tattoos are traditionally applied to the part of the body in need of protection, with anti-landmine tattoos placed on the legs, anti-fever tattoos near the heart. Sometimes, however, even the tattooist doesn't understand what he's applying.

Chan Trea says that a few weeks ago a monk asked him to tattoo a particular pattern but refused to say what it meant.

"In Cambodia, there are lots of secrets. People guard things jealously," he says, unfurling a copy of the mystery pattern he furtively kept.

Tattoo artists say women rarely indulge, partly for aesthetic reasons and because they fear they may be mistaken for prostitutes, but Kol sometimes blesses women's perfume bottles, protecting their aura that way.

"These foreign women wearing big tattoos, that looks rather strange to us," said Kong, the grandmother.

(Actress Angelina Jolie recently had a magic tattoo done on her left shoulder blade meant to protect her and her Cambodian son, Maddox, from bad luck and accidents. The translated Pali incantation reportedly reads in part: "May your enemies run far away from you; if you acquire riches, may they remain yours always.")

Cambodia's few remaining magic tattoo artists recognize that they're fighting an uphill battle but say they haven't lost hope.

"Granted, more and more people believe in rationality, technology and the Internet," Kol said. "But, you watch. As soon as the next war or crisis hits and they need us, they'll come running back."

Cambodia's spirit world

Clik on each photo to zoom in

Click here to view all the photos

May 16, 2010
By Jerry Redfern
Special to GlobalPost

Full Frame features photo essays and conversations with photographers in the field.

This project is a first glimpse into the Cambodian spirit world — it can never be more than a glimpse, for an outsider. Visiting foreigners — and those who have lived here for years — know this spirit world exists, but we often miss and misinterpret the common gestures: a bit of graffiti, a monk's breath, the flames of a candle. This world holds great appeal to an impoverished population that is poorly connected to the wider world, and unprotected from threats of modern progress.

I have worked as a photojournalist in Cambodia regularly (and irregularly) since 1998. I like to think this gives me a fairly good insight into daily life here, but I also understand that I will never be able to view the Cambodian cosmos as Khmers do. That cosmos is a blend of the ancient Hinduism of Angkor; spirit worship stemming in part from centuries of life hacked from jungles; and Buddhism, particularly its prayers, arcane writing and stories of religious men reborn into better lives.

The title “Be Unscared” comes from a sign at the Temple of the Floating Tree near Phnom Penh, home to a monk with an elephant tusk that people believe cures mental illness. While the sign echoes one of the teachings of the Buddha, it also sums up what Cambodians have wanted for centuries. It's a call for calm in the face of a dangerous world, whether the danger comes from beasts of the jungle or the people next door.

The photos were shot on film between January and May 2009, often while working on other assignments. Put another way, I don't have exact dates for when the photos were shot. In the end, the exact date makes little difference — I could just as well have shot the photos yesterday or a hundred years ago.

About the photographer:

For the last 12 years, photojournalist Jerry Redfern has worked on stories across Asia for publications around the globe. He now also spends part of the year crashing bikes at home in New Mexico. Author Karen Coates is the other half of his life. They often work on stories and projects together, including post-Khmer Rouge life in Cambodia, to ancient coffins in Thailand, to the people still dying from U.S. bombs in Laos, 35 years after the end of war.

Year of the Tiger is very bad for Cambodia: Prediction

Reminder: please don't forget to send Mr. Hun Xen your well wishes on his birthday on 04 April.

31 March 2010
By S. Botum
Free Press Magazine Online
Translated from Khmer by Socheata
Click here to read the article in Khmer

According the Moha Sangkran (almanac) book recently published by the ministry of Cult and religion, the year of the Tiger is the worst year for Cambodia.

Based on documents and fortunetellers working at the ministry of Cult, violence, natural disasters, social upheavals will take place in Cambodia in the upcoming year of the Tiger.

The almanac book indicated that: “The country will meet upheavals, wars, people will kill each other, and they will be separated from each others. The country will be in a bad situation when compared to the previous years.”

The almanac also predicted that agriculture will be fruitful in half of the country only, the weather will be very cold, and flood will take place due to strong rains.

Nevertheless, at this point in time when science has reached its zenith already, Cambodian people still consider predictions by fortunetellers as being important. However, bad events that took place last year – such as violence and killings, acid attacks, the Ketsana typhoon which led to at least 40 Cambodian dead and almost $132 million in damage, as well as other mishaps – could also become flash points [in the upcoming year].

On top of this, 4 April is also Hun Xen’s birthday, therefore his cronies and the big business hotshots are busily preparing to send their well wishes to him next week.

An Old piece On Cambodia As Khmer Rouge Trial Goes On

Apr 01, 2009
By Andrew Lam
New America Media

In the summer of 1992, while staying at a friend’s home outside the town of Siem Reap, Cambodia, I woke in the middle of the night and saw fire outside my window—or rather, to be more accurate, several balls of fire moving in a slow dance at a distance. For half a minute, I stood transfixed, watching those balls of light flutter and flirt with each other before they abruptly disappeared.

To this day I do not know what I saw, though I reasoned that they were torches carried by very fast runners. When I talked about the fire to soldiers, servants, housewives, and even politicians, however, many simply nodded their heads knowingly and said, “ghosts.”

“So many ghosts here, you know,” one woman remarked in a matter-of-fact way, “their souls have not gone to heaven. They are still very angry.”

It is risky for a journalist to talk about ghosts—it has taken me almost five years to tell this story—but I suspect ghosts and spirits and myths provide a crucial window to the Cambodian psyche. After all, modernity has little sway in a country where nine out of ten people live in the countryside, without electricity, where 7 out of ten are essentially illiterate, and where there is only one true urban center—the capital, Phnom Penh.

To explain the cause of their country’s suffering, most Cambodians are more likely to provide a ghost story or a legend than political analysis.

From notebooks I wrote while traveling the Cambodian countryside—An old woman named Srong said this about the Khmer Rouge. “The old monks used to say, ‘One day there will be a war where the demons come and blood will rise to the elephant’s stomach,’ and it came true.” Srong is blind. Her face is strangely serene as she explains she had witnessed the Khmer Rouge murdering her own children and then found she could no longer see. She spoke of the years under the Khmer Rouge as “Cambodia’s Punishment Time.”

A man named Hott Nguong explained the Khmer Rouge. “The Khmer Rouge soldiers are possessed by demons who came from hell. They have no souls. You can tell by looking in their eyes. If you are a human being how can you torture children to death?”

Bonn Srey, a woman who cannot read or write, explains Cambodia’s tragedy by saying the country is cursed. “A long time ago, the Cambodian king was powerful and cruel to neighboring countries and those people curse Cambodia. Now Cambodia is full of demons and ghosts.”

Intellectuals are not immune. Reasay Poch, a Cambodian American with a graduate degree in Asian Studies from Cornell was doing research at Tuol Sleng, the infamous Khmer Rouge prison where some 20,000 people were incarcerated, tortured, then systematically killed. Poch was working on the second floor of the building, reading and photocopying written confessions left behind by Khmer Rouge victims when he heard screaming and the sound of clanking metal. He rushed out to the balcony overlooking the torture chambers on the first floor, but saw nothing. “I had to tell myself even if there were ghosts, they wouldn’t harm me,” he said. “After all, I am here to help tell their stories.”

The past—both the mythic and the immediate—has such a strong grip on Cambodian life, I suspect, because it is also the present. While neighboring countries—Vietnam, Thailand, even backward Laos—are now progressing technologically and economically, Cambodia remains an agrarian society whose people continue to lead a life not so different from that of their ancestors.

One need not look far to see the symbol of the past in contemporary Cambodian politics. All warring factions during the early 1990s had the image of the ancient capital, Angkor Wat, imprinted on their flags. Paintings of these stone ruins hang on the walls of every government office, every restaurant and every classroom. They are a testament to an ancient empire that once stretched westward across Thailand to Burma and eastward to include much of the Mekong Delta and South Vietnam. “Bangkok” and “Saigon” are both Cambodian words.

It was an empire that at one time understood intimately the power of war and destruction. Cambodia was once a Hindu nation that worshipped Shiva, the Destroyer God. When he danced, it is said, he set in motion both the creative and destructive forces in the world.

Those who know the story say Shiva remains a potent and angry God. One Cambodian guide at Angkor Wat explained, “We failed to worship Shiva and he punished us by sending his Monkey Army in the form of the Khmer Rouge. Shiva promised to protect those who worshipped him and destroy all unbelievers. And we were punished because we failed to worship him.”

Shiva’s four faces with their eerie half smiles can be seen all over the stone ruins. Each represents a different aspect: Creation, Preservation, Incarnation, and Destruction. As I write, I can still see in my mind’s eyes those stone faces, smiling their mysterious smiles.

And I think of Kall Kann, the doe-eyed teenager who stared at the stone faces, trying to decipher the past: “The stone faces belong to a King, maybe a God, but it’s too long ago,” he said. ” I don’t remember the name. My father knows the name for sure but, you know, my father is dead.”