A Fortune-teller Told Me

An account of the travels of Tiziano Terzani, a news correspondent who travelled only by rail, road and sea, having been told that he should not risk flying by a fortune teller. Terzani consulted fortune tellers and shaman from then on, since the original seer had prevented him from taking a plane which had subsequently crashed in Cambodia.

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When a Hong Kong fortune-teller warned Tiziano Terzani that he should avoid plane flights in 1993, he decided to take the old man's advice. Fortunately his employer "Der Spiegel" did not seem unduly perturbed by the idea of a Far Eastern correspondent who wouldn't board an aeroplane. So by foot, boat, bus and car, the author visited or re-visited Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, all the while receiving much advice about the future, because he made a point of consulting fortune-tellers throughout the region. Underlying all this was a serious matter: the problem of destiny, of good or evil fate and how to deal with it, and the problem of identity now that the ancient world of diversity seems about to succumb to the strident demands of economic growth. The consequences of Terzani's decision was a year full of unexpected events and encounters, in which he reflects on his own fate and on that of the people he meets. And the fortune-teller did save him from an air crash when a UN helicopter on which he was to have travelled went down in Cambodia.