Other states, other lives, other souls

During the 5 years I spent traveling back and forth to Cambodia for work I also had several vacations in Vietnam and a dozen weekend stopovers in Bangkok, I noticed the importance of luck and gambling in the region. I learned that both Vietnam and China have long placed restrictions on their population’s ability to gamble except for state controlled lotteries.  In writing up these little anecdotes to show what I mean about the importance of luck and gambling I did a little Google search to see what might have changed since 2010.  I found this recent report in the newspaper This Week in Asia dated Feb. 5, 2017.

You could be forgiven if the obscure town of Bavet, on the border of Cambodia and Vietnam, does not top your list of places to see.  After all, Cambodia’s own tourism body describes it simply as a checkpoint between the neighbouring nations. But Bavet is home to one of Cambodia’s casino and gambling hubs, and it’s a hit with the Vietnamese.

“They nickname that Cambodia border town ‘casino city’,” said Jonny Ferrari, a gaming industry consultant based in Cambodia. “Every day, it is only Vietnamese coming in – in and out, in and out, all the time.”

As many as 12 casinos operate in Bavet, but with a landmark decision by Hanoi to allow Vietnamese people to gamble legally, the transient town and the businesses based there may have run out of luck.

Late last month, Vietnam’s government announced that from mid-March and for a three-year trial period, citizens aged above 21 and earning at least 10 million dong (HK$3,400) per month would be allowed to gamble at two soon-to-be-completed casinos – one on the island of Phu Quoc and the other in the Van Don Special Economic Zone in the northern Quang Ninh province. A third location in Ho Tram is expected to be added to the list of approved casinos.” 

I have been through Bavet.  The bus I took from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City stopped there to cross the border.  After miles of small towns and scrub jungle, there appeared on the horizon many huge multistory buildings, like a set of cruise ships lined up at a dock.  I learned then that they were built to provide a place for the Vietnamese to gamble since it was illegal at the time in Vietnam.

This link takes you to a gambling industry e-magazine, passing on cultural tips on how to keep the Chinese gambling at your off shore casinos.  (I am sure Sheldon Adelson has read them, if not written them): Eight Fascinating Chinese Gambling Superstitions

With that introduction here for your amusement are four little stories about luck from my travels in Cambodia.

1. One Saturday there was a riot after the under-17 soccer game at the stadium in Phnom Penh between Cambodia and Thailand. Cambodia won 2 to 0, but the gamblers bet that the difference would be greater.  They thought the Cambodian team had thrown the game—more signs of Cambodian corruption.  The next game was accompanied by a phalanx of Cambodian military.
2. Determined to defeat the American cellular companies’ stranglehold on mobile use outside of the US, I succeeded in unlocking my T-Mobile phone. Then I bought a Cambodian sim card and calling minutes for making calls in-country at a very reasonable price. I was later riding in the back seat of an NGO-SUV with my Cambodian co-worker, on our way to a training venue.  I mentioned my phone coup and he asked me what my new phone number was.  It was not so that he could call me, although he would do that too.  He had an app that allowed him to enter my phone number to find out if it was a lucky one or not.  It was!
3. I spent a Saturday in Phnom Penh with a bike group touring the outskirts of the city. We passed through a Khmer Muslim district where I witnessed a huge water buffalo being slaughtered in a side yard. Its cries were terrible.  Shortly after we left the Muslim area and entered a clearing where there was, to my amazement, a solid gold Buddhist temple.  It was recently built for the Khmer elite– politicians, generals, capitalists.  We walked through, shoeless and gawking at the splender.  In the back was a monk at a large rectangular table with a half-dozen or so penitents.  They appeared to be studying text, so I asked whether this was a religious study group.  No, this was a monk telling fortunes for those who have come concerned about prospects in some area of their lives.
4. On a Friday night I sat next to a German woman in the Foreign Correspondents Club in Phnom Penh, the first expat bar to open up after the Khmer Rouge were kicked out of the capital by the Vietnamese in 1979. She was a former lawyer—“dean of a law school”—who gave it all up to run a riverfront restaurant in Phnom Penh. She said: “it’s more authentic”.  It was August, the rainy season, and we were sitting on the second floor balcony watching the sunset.  The night before there was a torrential rain just after dark.  We talked about running a restaurant, the difficulty of having both men and women working together in Cambodia, when she interrupted to talk about the weather.  She said that everyone bets in the rainy season on whether it will rain that day or not.  She said she had a keen sense of the weather. She was quite convinced that it would not rain at all tonight.  “All night?” I said.  “Yes, all night”, she said. She paid up and headed home for the evening.  Fifteen minutes later it was pouring.