KHMER MYTHS

Myths are Cambodian common beliefs that are not necessarily true. Usually, no evidence can be shown to verify a myth. Cambodian development practitioners often play a role as myth-busters, in which they try very hard to educate people to get rid of such unhelpful beliefs. However, as they were very much challenged by the villagers, they also follow the Cambodian river.

Many (rural) Cambodians believe that our poverty and difficult life are caused by our bad actions in our previous life. Blessing is a Buddhist healing process, which can remove bad luck away and new luck to come in.

In order to do some things such as open a new business, house warming, starting a construction, we need to look for a lucky day, otherwise we will meet bad luck in the future. A lucky day can be determined by a fortuneteller or shown in New Year calendar.

When people want to get married, they need to consider the year they were born (horoscope). There is a belief that if horoscope of the bride and groom do not match each other, there will be bad luck. If a bride or groom are Chinese, the age differences cannot be 3; 6; 9 because these differences will bring a lot of conflict and bad luck.

Diseases and sickness are caused by village or forest ghosts. So, we need to apologize to the ghost so that they can be healed.

There will be always a lucky number for your car, motorbike, phone etc. Cambodian lucky numbers are numbers that adding up to a value of 9 or at least 8. Examples of Cambodian lucky numbers: 1233 (1+2+3+3=9); 7354 (7+3=10 or 0 and 5+4=9, so the final calculation is 9). The bad number for Cambodian is 10.

When you eat fish, some times a fish bone is stuck in your throat. To solve this problem, Cambodians believe that we need to find someone who born in an opposite direction from the mother’s uterus, then asks him or her to use 3 incenses to pour a class of water, and finally drink.

A number of people, especially men, believe that drinking cobra venom (mixing with rice wine) make men’s testicle strong. Furthermore, they believe that eating snakes like cobra or eel increases their physical body power.

Snakes (cobra, other types of snakes) will stand still when they see a pregnant woman. So, there is no risk of snake bites for a pregnant woman .

A house that faces to the East is best (number 1), a house faces South is also good (number 2), a house faces North just quiet good (number 3), and the house faces West is the least preferred as it will not bring comfortability like other directions.

Cambodian sellers have a strong belief that in their every day selling activity, the first customer, who comes to buy some thing in the early morning, is very important. If the first customer is a good person, Sellers believe that luck will come to their shop in the remaining times of that day. Often, they sell goods under the normal prize attempting to get luck from the next customers. On the other hand, sellers will be angry with any customer, who comes to their shop as first person in early morning, and just ask and query some thing, but doesn’t buy any thing from their shop.