We wandered the garden in front of the Royal Palace, searching for the small tables marked by incense sticks. Finally, we stopped and asked a roadside cart seller: 'Do you know where we can find a fortune teller?' Serendipitously, we randomly asked a son of a fortune teller, who immediately explained that they all had gone in for the night but called his mother to ask her to meet us.

We waited at the food cart, loaded with Khmer snacks such as bird eggs, crickets, and tarantulas. My nerves jittered. I had asked to go to a fortune teller not to reveal a great mystery or solve a pressing problem; I simply wanted to experience something so imbedded in Cambodia's culture. But what if it turned out to be something other than what I expected? What if it turned out to be real?

The son got the call that she was ready, and he led us back to the house where the fortune tellers stayed. A woman was waiting for us, and she immediately inquired of Sambath what my language ability was. He assured her that she should be able to communicate directly with me but that he was able to translate if needed (it was needed).

She lay a rug on a small card table, smoothed it out carefully, and spritzed it with a layer of perfume. She then lit an incense stick, held it between her palms, and gave a short, silent prayer. We were ready to start.

Traditionally, fortune tellers in Cambodia are used for two main categories of questions: love and business. I was there to ask about my love life.

She passed me a deck of cards and asked me to shuffle it. Both she and Sambath chuckled at my Western shuffling technique and asked me to do it Asian-style, at which I am wholly unskilled, but I gave it my best attempts. Then it was time to cut the deck. I reached for it, naturally, with my right hand, and, since I touched the cards, we had to start over. So again I shuffled and again I cut the deck (properly with my left hand this time).

She dealt the cards out in a asterisk shape, turning only select cards face up, based on those cards, she made a statement about me which was quite accurate. She continued the process, pulling out more cards and making statements while asking clarification questions. I was permitted to probe and ask follow ups which resulted in various patterns of card dealing.

She told me that I have the potential to be a rich person and that I will soon encounter a type of promotion in my career. With sadness, though, after I pulled the King of Clubs three times in a row, she told me that in the next month I would encounter tragedy, and she implored me to pray to whatever god I pray to. When I told her I didn't hold to a religion, she suggested I turn back to Christianity or come back to her the next day to allow her to pray on my behalf. She said that in the next year I would have great success in my love life, so I inquired about my current boyfriend. She asked his birth year and declared that it shouldn't be because two dragons should not be together. He would hold me back from future riches. She apologized when she found out that my translator was my boyfriend, but she said she was only speaking the truth. She suggested that he go to her for a ceremony to make himself older by at least six months so that we would be different signs.

After about 20 minutes of various card drawing patterns and a two-person read in which Sambath's and my compatibility was tested (it again revealed his need to be at least a year older than me, but his own personal read was much better than mine, he drawing the hearts and me the clubs), we thanked her for her time, paid, and respectfully made our exit.

I won't make the return trip she requested to pray my upcoming tragedy away and Sambath won't perform a ceremony to add six months to his age, but that night's walk home from the riverside was a bit more quiet than usual. I understand why people would spend a small part of their salary each month to ask about what's coming, to get advice, and to have help to do anything and everything possible to make the future the best it could be.