Serendipity Road: between heaven and hell

By Robert Schneider

Take a magic carpet ride through the honeycomb of time. Serendipity Road is set in Cambodia, where the author has lived for over 10 years. He tells the remarkable story of Sopheak, who wandered into the jungle at the age of eight and didn't return home for nearly two years. Sopheak introduced the author to a side of Cambodia most foreigners don't get to see: a land of ghosts and spirits just behind the surface of life. In a series of flashbacks, the author recounts many miraculous experiences he has had. He experienced miracles in India in 1971 and 1972 and experienced energy healing in Bali and as a practitioner in Australia.

Serendipity Road is more than stories about miracles. The author has had his ups and downs in life and doesn't hesitate to recount the stupid things he has done. As he writes: "Experiences like those should have been enough for me to become a more exemplary person, but there’s an inescapable magnetism that binds us to this thick, dense, dark world." Hop aboard the magic carpet and discover how fate in the guise of a beautiful goddess he calls Serendipity guides the author through this world from the United States, to Australia, Indonesia and finally Cambodia, a destination a psychic predicted three years before the author even imagined he would visit, much less call home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Schneider
• Release date: Jun 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640073357

Robert Schneider

Robert Schneider has been a freelance writer since 1997. It was casual at first. He wrote for surfing magazines, travel publications and an antiques magazine. Since 2010, he has been working full time from his home in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. He has a popular blog about Sihanoukville, but his blog is designed for the average tourist. He was compelled to write Serendipity Road, between heaven and hell because he wanted to share another side of life with readers. Serendipity Road tells about the magic that's just behind the surface of everyday life. It is an unvarnished account of how fate brought two unlikely people together. While magic and spirituality are a large part of the story, the author doesn't hesitate to tell how he has stumbled down Serendipity Road, making many mistakes along the way.

Book preview

This is a story about how fate brought two people together. Separated by vast cultural and age differences, they were an unlikely pair, but destiny didn't see it that way. We'll start with the story of Sopheak's early life and dive through the honeycomb of time to track the events that led to their lives together in Cambodia.

Once upon a time, a little girl lived in heaven between lifetimes. She felt like she was about nine years old, the same age she died in her previous lifetime when she fell out of a tree. The last thing she remembers about living in heaven is her loving family.

Mama and Papa color blue, she recalls. She fell from taan leu one day when she watched a group of children splashing around in a pond here on taan kaandal. They looked silly to her, but did look like they were having fun. The next thing she knew, she was in a Cambodian village much like the one she had loved so much in her previous life, but with a new mother, father, brothers and sisters.

Sopheak has dog’s eyes. Cambodians believe dogs can see spirits and any human who sees spirits has dog’s eyes. Spirits didn’t frighten her; not even evil spirits. Seeing them was as natural to her as normal vision is to us. She saw one old woman who wandered about late at night. She carried her head in her hands because it would not stay on her head, but she needed it to see. The old woman was angry about something and wanted to do harm, especially to children. Sopheak warned the villagers to keep their children indoors late at night. Children went out late to pee, but their parents set aside containers in the house for them to use so they wouldn’t risk being harmed by the old woman.

She would have gladly lived in the rice fields for the rest of her life, but fate had other plans for Sopheak. First her family moved to Phnom Penh, where her mother had inherited a modest house. Her mother became ill and the doctor's bill forced her family to sell the house. With little money and no way to pay rent, they had to leave the city. A relative had gotten work at a palm plantation outside Virh Riengh, about three hours by car from Phnom Penh. Papa decided that was the best opportunity for the family, so they packed up their few belongings and moved.

Sopheak loved her new home in the tiny village of Khmeng Wat, just outside the larger town of Virh Riengh, about an hour's drive from Sihanoukville. From the doorstep of their one room wooden stilt house, she looked out over the jungle to distant mountains. She dreamed of wandering inside tree and exploring the jungles and mountains of Cambodia, but wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving her family behind and entering the jungle alone until fate nudged the girl, who had not reached the age of nine, into the jungle.

Papa had not found a job yet, and the family survived on the little remaining money they had from the sale of their house. One day, Mama and Papa took the older boys, Rah and Rote, with them to the market, along with Sopheak’s younger sister Ana. They left her at home with instructions not to leave the house. With nothing else to do, she sat at the doorstep staring at the hills, imagining herself swinging from the trees with the monkeys.

A man walked past and asked her where her parents were. She told them they had gone to the market.

I’ll bet you’d like some candy, wouldn’t you? he said with a smile.

Yes, but I’m not allowed to leave the house.

I can buy some for you if you like. I don’t have any money, though.

Sopheak knew where Papa stashed the money and found some to give the man. She didn’t know how much any of it was worth or how much the candy would cost, so she took some bills and gave them to the nice man, who promised he would give her the change when he came back with the candy.

Sopheak wouldn’t have given the man the money in Phnom Penh, but Khmeng Wat reminded her of the village she grew up in. She knew and trusted everyone there and thought she could trust the man. She didn’t know she lived near the main road between Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville. Sometimes outsiders came to the village to beg or steal money. When they got what they wanted, they went on their way.

The man never returned and when Sopheak told Papa and Mama what had happened, Papa flew into a rage. He grabbed a knife and threatened to kill her if she didn’t return the money. He was fine sometimes, but when the switch went off in his head, he could turn violent. Once he even locked the whole family inside their stilt house and threatened to burn it down. He never carried out his more murderous threats, but they frightened the young girl. She never knew if one day he would finally snap and kill someone.

The big news around the village at the time was about a phnong family staying at the edge of the plantation. Phnong means savage in Khmer and the word is used for any group of people who live in the jungle. Many did, even as late as the early 1990s, when Sopheak’s adventure began. Most Cambodians believed phnong were cannibals, but even that threat didn’t deter Sopheak, who already feared for her life. The phnong had brought a tiger skin with them and sold it for a high price. She thought if she traveled with them, she could kill a tiger and be able to pay Papa back by selling its skin. She knew where they were staying, so she snuck out of the house at the first opportunity and met them at the edge of the jungle. They agreed to take her with them, but warned her she had to keep up with them or they would leave her behind.

The following morning, she followed the family into the jungle. The father removed his clothes and put them in a bag. He felt more comfortable wearing a loincloth. It struck the young girl as funny, but she forced herself not to laugh.

Weeks went by and they traveled further into the jungle. Then one day a child went missing. That night, the mother served a big meat meal. She believed it was the missing child and made an excuse not to eat. Then one afternoon she became positive she was next on the list. The mother told her to bathe before she went to sleep, something she had never done before. She did as instructed, but lay awake until the family fell asleep. Then she tiptoed off into the jungle.

She had learned a few tricks from the phnong, but otherwise had to rely on observation, instinct and intuition to survive. The family’s staple food was a potato that grew wild everywhere in the jungle. It was easy to spot and bland, but edible even raw. She stole a lighter from the family, but used it sparingly because she hadn’t yet learned how to start a fire with stones. Other than the lighter, her only possession was the spare pair of pajamas she had brought with her so she could look presentable when she came out of the jungle with the tiger skin.

Fear and loneliness plagued her in equal measures during her first weeks alone in the jungle. She kept fear at bay by saying Maybe I sleep, not wake up before she slept at night. Every morning she said, Maybe I die today, but not dead yet and found the courage to keep going.

Loneliness was worse than the fear of death. She remembered living in taan leu, so did not fear death, but she still had an instinct for survival and hoped to reunite with her family. Then one day she found a squirrel with a broken leg. It could have provided her with a meal, but she wanted a companion more than a meal, so she captured the squirrel, put a splint on its leg and calmed it down. She named him Yuri. He became her companion throughout her sojourn in the wild places of Cambodia. She learned how to communicate with Yuri and sometimes the squirrel helped her find food or water for them to share.

Sopheak ran into her first tiger not long after she met Yuri. They came face-to-face in a clearing. The tiger snarled at her, but the quick-witted girl knew what to do. The phnong had told her to climb a tree with a narrow trunk to escape a tiger because the tiger’s claws couldn’t dig into the trunk. If she had to escape a rogue elephant, they told her to climb a thick tree because elephants could easily pull down a sapling. She scrambled up a tree and the tiger, unable to follow, sat at its base growling. She grew more confident and started talking to the tiger, asking it why it wanted to kill her when other food was available. Eventually it stopped growling and left her alone.

In time, she learned that she rarely needed to fear tigers. They only killed when they were hungry or felt they needed to protect their young. If she stayed calm and kept her distance, they didn’t bother her. One night she had a dream. She slept soundly in the arms of her mother. When she woke up, she felt a weight on her shoulders. It was a tiger’s paw. The tiger had taken pity on the girl and watched over her protectively. She lifted the paw off her shoulder, said accuun trann (thank you) to the tiger and went on her way. From that day on she never feared tigers, but she did fear wild boars and crocodiles, which killed anything that moved without mercy.

Wanting to have someone to play with, Sopheak tried to make friends with monkeys. They didn’t seem interested in letting her join them, though, and the big monkeys frightened her away. She kept her distance, but observed what they ate. She supplemented her diet with the foods the monkeys ate, but rarely got her hands on the best foods, like bananas. The monkeys ate almost all of them and wouldn’t let her get near enough to snatch one or two for herself.

Watching the monkeys didn’t relieve her loneliness, but Sopheak learned from them. She noticed they didn’t fight their way through the jungle like she had to do. They effortlessly jumped from tree to tree. She was smaller than the largest monkeys, so didn’t see why she couldn’t do the same. The first time she tried jumping from one branch to another, the second branch broke. She watched them more closely and noticed how the monkeys took a deep breath as they moved from one branch to another. She thought that made them float. Her observation may not have been scientifically accurate, but it worked. Before long she could move through the trees rather than scratch her way through the jungle floor where mosquitoes were a constant nuisance and she was always in danger of being bitten by a snake or poisonous insect.

Sopheak learned to prefer moving through the trees more than on solid ground. She even learned to sleep in the treetops, but used vines to tie herself to a branch, just in case she rolled over in her sleep and fell down. Her tactic saved her a few times, but eventually she learned how to sleep in the branches without rolling over and falling. She loved sleeping in the trees because she could see the stars in the sky. They comforted her and when she awoke in the morning, she could see into the distance. She would choose a destination and she and Yuri would make it their goal for the day. Sometimes she chose a destination for practical reasons. If she saw a body of water, she knew she would have water to drink and could even bathe unless there were signs of crocodiles. At other times, something in the distance intrigued her. Having a goal helped keep her interested in living.

In time, Sopheak stopped thinking in words and mimicked the sounds of animals. She learned Yuri’s language first, but later could lure other animals and insects to her by mimicking the sounds they made. She hadn’t forgotten her native language, though, and on the few occasions she met other jungle dwellers, she could communicate with them. One was a Khmer Rouge soldier. She didn’t fear him because he was on the verge of death and told her how much he regretted killing his fellow Cambodians. Partly out of pity and partly out of loneliness, she stayed with him and tried to keep him alive by fetching water and food for him. He didn’t live long and she buried him when he died. She used his bayonet to dig the hole and was tempted to keep it, but it belonged to him and he might need it in the afterlife, so she buried it with him.

When Sopheak found an empty cave, she stayed in it for a few days. Empty caves were rare because animals often inhabited them and didn’t appreciate intruders. She found the perfect cave at the beginning of the rainy season. No animals lived inside it, but she shared the cave with the skeleton of a man. She saw his ghost walking back and forth in front of the cave at night as if he was looking for something. She covered his skeleton with stones to give him a proper burial and in hopes his ghost would leave, but it continued to patrol the area in front of the cave. When the rain stopped, Sopheak and Yuri moved on, but the ghost of the man continued his patrol.

Sopheak remembers living inside tree for at least two rainy seasons and two dry seasons, so she lived without human companionship for up to two years. After a while, she began to think like her animal companions and avoided villages and towns, giving them a wide berth and staying out of sight. There were exceptions, though, usually when loneliness overcame her. Once, when she saw children her age playing on the other side of a body of water, she called out to them. They didn’t hear or see her and she was afraid to swim over to meet them, so she sat on the shore crying as she watched them play.

Sopheak’s journey took her almost to the Laos border, about three hundred and fifty miles from where her adventure began. Since she didn’t travel in a straight line, her actual journey was a lot longer than that. She may have kept going had it not been for a woman she met while climbing a hill in what is now Kulem Prum Tep Wildlife Sanctuary. The woman looked like an apparition in her beautiful clothes, so out of place in the jungle. She had a kind face and spoke gently to the girl. She was the companion of the King’s son, she told her. He lived in a hut on top of the hill, meditating and learning humility by living a simple life. The woman took her to meet him and he told Sopheak she should try to return to her family. She told him where she was from and he told her how to use the sun to guide her in the right direction. She and Yuri stayed with them for a few days and then headed south.

It took months for the little girl to find her way back to Virh Riengh. She could have gotten there faster, but when someone offered her a ride in the back of a pickup truck, she declined, thinking they really wanted to feed her to the smoke bellowing monster they were riding in. When she and Yuri reached Virh Riengh, the first words that came out of her mouth were the sounds she made when speaking with Yuri. When it became clear the villagers didn’t understand her, she reverted to the Khmer language and the villagers informed that her family had left the village over a year previously and no one knew where they went. Some kind villagers took her in.

Yuri didn’t fare as well. A cat killed her. In a rage, Sopheak killed the cat and wept for days. Yuri was more than a pet. The squirrel was her best friend and the only one who knew what she had lived through in the jungle.

Meeting Serendipity

The year of Sopheak’s birth, I started a new life in Australia. Like her, I took on a new name, if not a new body, when our family made the move. For most of my life, everyone except my father, who called me Robert, knew me as Bob. When I moved to Australia, my new friends and acquaintances called me Rob. I didn’t correct them because I was happy to slip into a new identity. I wasn’t trying to fit in. I wanted to shed my American skin. Australia suited me better than the United States. In fact, I felt reborn when I moved there. Australians weren’t perfect, but they were more interested in enjoying life than in becoming successful and what you did for a living wasn’t as important to them as who you were.

If fate had not intervened, I would still be in Australia today and not have a story to tell. But fate intervened and here I am, tapping away at my desk, just as an amateur psychic predicted before I even imagined coming here to visit, much less live. It started in February of 2004, when I had to go to California to look after my dying father. The timing couldn’t have been better. The foreman at the boat factory I worked at as a cabinetmaker had just announced that the owners were struggling to keep the business afloat and we should look for other jobs. I was wondering what sort of job I’d find next when the phone rang. The caller was a real estate agent in California. He had taken Dad to the hospital and overheard the doctor tell him he had stomach cancer.

If you want to see your Dad, you should come over now, he told me. He only has a couple of months left.

I called my Dad and told him I’d be there as soon as I could. A week later, I flew to Los Angeles, rented a car and drove out to his house. Dad seemed cheerful enough, but was worried. He needed help getting his affairs in order. That was typical of him. After my parents divorced, he became the most fearful person I have ever met. He became so neurotic about money, I saw him hand money to pay for things and draw his hand back because he didn’t want to let go of it. His paranoia about money created a rift between us and I avoided seeing him. We kept in touch, but I could only stand to be with him for a few days before his constant worrying got to me.

Going to California to help him was my last chance to heal the rift and I promised myself I wouldn't let his fear get to me. He had me running around doing errands for the next two months, but I stayed true to my promise and did whatever he asked. It was lucky I did, because if I hadn't, lawyers and the government would have taken the lion's share of the modest inheritance I shared with my two nieces.

I finally cleared up Dad's financial issues and sold his three properties. When I told him the news, he gave me an invaluable lesson about life and death. More importantly, I learned how much he cared about his family. It had always been hidden behind his fear, but we were his greatest concern.

Hi Dad. Well, we sold the little house today and the money’s in the bank. I can’t think of anything else we need to do.

He smiled and said, So I can go now?

His reply took me by surprise, but his tone told me how tired he felt and I got the feeling he wanted to die.

If you want to, was all I said.

A moment later, the nurse walked in and told me I had to go. She told Dad she had to take his blood pressure.

Zero! he said with a laugh. I laughed with him and she looked at us like we were mad. Early the next morning, I received a call from the hospice.

Your father died in his sleep. If you want to see him, you should come now and we’ll discuss what to with his remains.

When I got to the hospice, I saw Dad lying in bed with the most peaceful expression on his face. I couldn’t feel sad because I knew he died when he wanted to. His body was just an empty carcass and I knew the soul that animated his body had moved on. My overwhelming emotion was one of gratitude. I felt grateful that we were able to bridge the rift between us and grateful Dad shed the fear that had plagued him for so many years.

After his funeral, I used some of my inheritance to buy a plane ticket for Chloe. She had just turned sixteen and I wanted to give her a tour of California as a birthday present. I had taken Justin on a surfing trip to Indonesia for his sixteenth birthday and a tour of California seemed like the perfect gift for Chloe. We had a wonderful trip around California, which included a visit to City Lights Books in San Francisco. I was delighted to see my bookshelves were still being used, twenty years after I installed them. Then we drove down the coast and I showed her around LA. She returned to Australia alone while I tied up a few loose ends. When I returned to Australia a week later, my wife told me she had fallen in love with another man.

Aside from fighting to keep the house until after Chloe finished high school, I had my future to think of. My job prospects in Australia were poor and I wasn’t looking forward to the lifestyle I would have on a single income. The best plan I could come up with was to take a course in teaching English as a second language. After Chloe finished high school, I would go to Bali or another cheaper country and teach ESL. I took the train from the Central Coast to Sydney and walked from there to the campus. After my class, I stopped in at a metaphysical bookshop between the college and the train station. I lost interest in metaphysics after the responsibilities of being a father took center stage in my life. That stage of my life was drawing to a close, though, so I felt drawn to the bookshop. I was such a regular visitor; I became friends with their resident palm reader, a sweet young woman who had some domestic problems of her own.

It never crossed my mind to ask my friend for a palm reading. She offered it for free one sunny day while we ate lunch together in Hyde Park. She could see the broken line on my palm that presaged my predicament and showed me the smooth line after the break that said things would get better for me in the future. I might have believed her if only because it was the kind of news I wanted to hear, but then she dropped a bomb shell.

Your palm tells me there are four children in your life.

I already have two kids, I told her with a smile I hoped told her I didn't mean to offend her. I can’t see two more on the horizon at my age.

Yes, I know, she smiled. I’m only telling you what your palm is telling me. The lines are a little less pronounced, so maybe they won’t be your biological children, but they will be yours. Your palm doesn’t lie. She had more faith in palmistry than I and she turned out to be right.

One thing I can say for my TESL class is that it got me employment in Australia, so at least I could pay myself back the three thousand dollars the course cost me. Other than that and the fact that the course was responsible for my meeting my palm reading friend, it was a waste of time. Okay, it also helped keep panic at bay and gave me a false, but necessary, sense that I had control of my life. It wasn’t until my next trip to Bali that I let go and allowed myself be tossed by the winds of fate.

I flew to Bali to check out job opportunities and attend a writer's workshop, but within days of landing, I saw that a career as an ESL teacher wasn’t in my cards. Younger, better qualified expats coveted the job. The schools I contacted made it clear that waiting around until a position became available probably wasn’t in my best interests. All my rational ideas exhausted, my brain froze. What was I going to do now?

I did what any intelligent person would do: I consulted a tarot card reader.

I didn’t plan on consulting her. It just happened one day in a café on Jalan Arjuna in Seminyak. The card reader, a gorgeous Italian woman in her twenties, was just finishing a reading with a customer when I walked in. As soon as her customer left, I approached her and asked for a reading. What does the future hold in store for me in Bali? I asked.

Excuse me, but I only give readings by appointment, she replied with more than a tinge of annoyance. Under normal circumstances, I might have walked away with my tail between my legs, but this time I held my ground.

Sorry! I thought you worked here. Can I explain my situation to you? Maybe you can make an exception and give me a reading now, if you have time.

She warmed to me after hearing my story of woe and even apologized for her rudeness. Men rarely ask me for readings, she explained, and when they do, they usually hit on me.

No, I’d like a reading, I replied. Honestly, I might not have been as enthusiastic if she hadn’t been so beautiful. I had a bad attitude towards most tarot readers. Without facts to back up my belief, I assumed they told people like me who were in a bind what they wanted to hear. I was at an impasse, though, and set my prejudice aside. Besides, it gave me a chance to have a chat with her.

The first card she focused on showed a young man dancing on the edge of a precipice. This is the Fool, she told me. He can play an important part in your life if you let him. The card nearest the Fool, the Four of Pentacles, showed a picture of a man hoarding his wealth. He reflected the part of my personality that wanted to cling to its old life. From those two cards, the rest of the cards fanned out in opposite directions, like two paths I had the choice of following. Proceeding through the cards nearest the Four of Pentacles, she concluded that following his path might not be disastrous, but wouldn't be materially or spiritually rewarding. If I followed the Fool's lead and set my hopes, fears and prejudices aside, my future looked bright.

It looks like you’ll even find love, she smiled, pointing to a card near the end of the Fool’s journey.

What about teaching English in Bali? I asked, still clinging to that fading dream.

She didn’t see it in my cards and wasn’t too enthusiastic about my question. That’s the sort of job that’s on the Four of Pentacles side of the spread. See how the man has his feet planted firmly on top of two gold coins? That symbolizes his need to stay put and protect his wealth. He’s holding another coin close to his heart and the fourth coin on top of his head says money is all he thinks about. It’s up to you, but does that look like the life you want to live?

If I let my hair down like the Fool, the time I spent in Bali would be fruitful in other ways. She saw a woman in my near future, too. It wouldn’t be a long-lasting relationship and she would take advantage of me. That’s what we do, the reader added with a twinkle in her sea-green eyes and a seductive smile, but the relationship will be good for you if you let it happen. She also hinted