Magic watches 'protect from traffic'

[emad]

Magic watches 'protect from traffic'

Phnom Penh, Cambodia



13 October 2005 09:39

A Cambodian Buddhist monk said on Thursday he had launched a line of wristwatches, their faces emblazoned with his image and embedded with a powerful magic charm, to protect his followers from the developing nation's increasingly chaotic traffic.

Venerable Keat Chanthuch, head monk at Chout Nhean pagoda in the south-western seaside resort town of Sihanoukville, 240km from the capital, said he had been motivated to create the designer watches after a series of fatal bus crashes on the busy road that links his municipality to the capital.

"The idea came about when some of my students told me they respected me so much that they would like to wear watches blessed by me and with my picture on them. I obliged, and some of those students were subsequently involved in a bus crash from which they were the only survivors," Chanthuch said.

Demand for the watches increased as word of their apparently magic powers spread, he said, and he has now created about 3 000 of the timepieces, all of which feature his image, with an ancient Yon, or protective Pali language spell, on the inside of the face.
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