“There are a lot of men who love you,” Khieu Sokhorn told Nimol as the two huddled over the blue plastic table that was draped in cloths of neon pink, orange and gold.
Nimol, 22, watched stone-faced as Khieu Sokhorn flipped cards, laying them down on the table with short, sharp smacks.
In a month, Khieu Sokhorn, 55, continued, “a man in his 20s will ask to marry you. But [one month later], a man in his 40s will come to you. You will have a light-skinned man as your husband.”
Her questions apparently answered, Nimol, a waitress in Phnom Penh who asked to have only her first name used, nodded, stood, and handed over 2000 riel before walking away from the littered yard near the river where Khieu Sokhorn works her magic.
The fortune teller lit two cigarettes, taking one in deep drags, and offering the other to the maroon Buddha she kept in a cramped, hodgepodge shrine on a nearby fence.
“I feel better,” Nimol said, exhaling and smiling.
Khieu Sokhorn, hearing Nimol’s response, smiled. Another satisfied customer.
And that is the key to the trade. Despite tight competition, aggressive government regulation and the occasional crook that threatens to tarnish its reputation, fortune-telling offers its practitioners a steady wage. The trade’s customers, like Nimol, say they get something else, something that is priceless to them: Peace of mind.
Whether crowded behind the chains at the park across from Wat Phnom or spread out randomly along the riverfront where they hide or bribe their way out of police interference, Phnom Penh’s fortune tellers sit quietly in their makeshift booths, offering customers a seat at the small plastic tables. For about 2000 riel they promise to tell you whether your spouse is faithful, how you might find one, when you will have children, whether or not to sell your house, how to solve the problem with your demanding landlord or what the advancing years will bring you.
And people come, often in droves, just for that kind of advice. Popular fortune tellers can make $20 per day, or more.
As a result, the industry is booming, some fortune tellers say.
“Before, there were about three or four fortune tellers here at Wat Phnom, now there are 40-50,” said Tang Yeng Meur, 59, whose shrine covers a quarter of a nearby banyan tree with sherbet-colored silks, Buddhist icons and incense sticks.
Tang Yeng Meur, who has been reading palms and cards across the street from Phnom Penh’s most sacred pagoda since 1982, said many of the upstarts are former clients.
“Some of these other fortune tellers learned my techniques by pretending to be customers. Some customers taught their whole families,” Tang Yeng Meur said.
If customers sometimes become fortune tellers, fortune tellers can become customers, too.
“Rin,” 46, asked that her real name not be used as she left one of the booths near Wat Phnom because she herself plies the trade.
Amid the titters of the other fortune tellers and their clients, Rin explained that she was having problems with a landlord who would not give her the key to a house she leased. It was a problem that required more magic than she possessed, Rin said.
It is not unusual for her to visit other soothsayers for advice, Rin said.
“I’ve had a lot of problems since I lost my job at the Chamber of Commerce four years ago,” she said.
Just as customers turn to fortune tellers in times of crises, so too do many tellers discover their gifts in the same circumstances.
Khieu Sokhorn, for instance, said that she obtained her powers after surviving the Khmer Rouge. Her dead parents came to her in a dream and “promised to save me from hardship. They asked me to prepare a ceremony so that I could get fortune-telling magic.”
Pov Vorlak, 58, a former tobacco vendor who runs a booth on the river bank, tells a similar story.
Two decades ago, facing financial ruin, “a magic soul without a shadow” came to her on her sickbed and demanded she become a fortune teller, she said.
“The spirits threatened to chop my soul into four parts and keep me from my next life if I didn’t become a fortune teller,” she said.
The career choice was probably better than other prospects, but it has not been lucrative. While most fortune tellers interviewed for this story reported making between $5 and $20 per day, Pov Vorlak said she only “lives like a chicken,” scratching out “sustenance.” She makes just enough each day to pay her bills, she said.
But some soothsayers find their fortunes in fortune-telling.
Chhuon Sarin, 49, who works a table near Wat Phnom, said that some of her clients have given her up to $100 for a good reading. She showed off an autograph book signed by some of her wealthier, more famous patrons.
She then fluttered her eyebrows at her Western questioner, promising him a prosperous year, with a promotion to management.
For her part, Khieu Sokhorn said she makes about $10 per day.
The feast-or-famine nature of the trade can lead to intense rivalries. After speaking with Chhuon Sarin—who physically dragged reporters to her booth for an interview—some of her competitors warned reporters to stay away from her.
“She’s no good,” one rival said, clucking her
tongue.
The competition can also lead to aggressive sales techniques. While waiting to speak with Pov Vorlak, reporters could overhear another fortune teller telling a woman that the only way to keep her cheating husband away from his mistress was to pay $3.50 for a magic amulet.
“I don’t have the money now, how about next time?” the customer asked, furrowing her brow.
“You must do it now. Yey Mao [the spirit] told me to charge this amount. If you wait until next time, the problem will go from bad to worse,” the fortune teller said.
Occasionally, fortune tellers do not bother to ask for a client’s money.
Srin Narin, 17, originally of Kien Chrey village in Kampong Cham province, was jailed last month on charges that she pocketed gold from the women who had come to her for marital help.
The women had asked her to use the gold to make them more attractive to their husbands, but the girl took the precious metal instead, admitting now that she did not know how to use the gold to enhance the women’s’ beauty.
In a recent interview at Prey Sar prison, Srin Narin, trembling, said that she moved to Phnom Penh to work in a garment factory, and turned to fortune telling to help feed her younger brothers back home.
“I used cards to guess fortunes, [and] I was correct,” Srin Narin said of her early forays into fortune telling, done mostly for single women in the neighborhood.
Following a road common to most fortune tellers, Srin Narin said her reputation grew, and that was what brought her to the attention of the women now insisting on her prosecution.
Over the course of two months, the women paid her in money, mosquito nets, blankets, food and, finally, the gold, Srin Narin said.
“They thought I knew this charm magic, but I don’t…so I just put in my pocket, I have to feed her brothers home,” she said.
She has not told her family of her detainment, Srin Narin said, adding that she was “very worried and I don’t know how long I’m going to be here.”
That did little to ease the anger of one of Srin Narin’s alleged victims, Chan Chamreurn, 23.
“I lost about $400 I thought she knew love magic. She’s tricky.”
she said.
Kim Sophoan, the investigating judge in the case, said that because Srin Narin is so young, and because she only stole to feed herself and her family, she will not face a long jail term.
“She is just a country girl who came to Phnom Penh to get a job,” Kim Sophoan said.
Seeing fortune telling transformed into yet another vocation for those without options is what most disgusts Tang Yeng Meur. Although he learned his craft from a book, he said he considers himself an authentic fortune teller. The flood of upstarts cheapens the craft, he said.
“Now, even the food vendors or sugar-cane sellers work as fortune tellers, too. There are only three or four real fortune tellers, and the rest are fakes,” he said.
Some Cambodians skip the middle-man and go straight to the spirit world themselves.
At Wat Phnom and other pagodas around the city, worshippers are invited to pray to Buddha three times, and then ask a question about their future. Holding a loose-leaf parchment book above their head, the devout then drop a red marker to a random page. According to their belief, Buddha will guide their hands to the answer to their question.
The competition among fortune tellers is likely to get tighter in Wat Phnom, with a government decision to crack down. Tang Yeng Meur said that he already pays the government about 2,500 riel per day in taxes. Now, the government has banned fortune tellers along the river front.
“They harm the city’s beauty,” Chea Sunthel, deputy police director of Chaktomouk, said.
Only a handful of fortune tellers are left along the river walk. Those who remain bribe police officers, Pov Vorlak said, in a low whisper—after a police officer passed by.
Chea Sunthel said the recent crackdown is nothing personal against fortune tellers, and it is not an attempt to keep people away from them.
“No one can ban you from believing an abstract thing,” he said. “But it doesn’t look good if fortune tellers are spread everywhere around the city. It’s not nice that they put their tables and burn incense along the riverside.”
Khieu Sokhorn saw the government’s new policy first hand. As she spoke, a soldier came and shouted at her.
“I asked you to move already, and you haven’t yet. Maybe I’ll take your table,” the soldier said.
But even driven from public spaces, the craft isn’t likely to suffer. For Yey Chan, 75, who regularly visits soothsayers, the encounter is a great way to gain perspective and unwind.
“I just feel relaxed after meeting fortune tellers,” she said.
Besides, she has a special mission on this day:
“I’m looking for a wife for my grandson,” she said, giggling as her blushing grandson stood by.
