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To me, playing lottery was okay even though you could
lose some hard-earned money.  What troubled me was the
card playing and the casino.  In Thakek, the card
playing was spreading like a fire in the dry season,
and it was virtually legal.  Not a few times, I saw
many policemen came to play at my house during my
mom's recovery after giving birth (Gnun Kum).  I would
say most people playing cards at my house were high
ranking people or, if not themselves, their wives. 
They played black jack and some other card games which
I didn't know.  The cash amount played was huge.  I
would say that it amounted to over one hundred
thousands Kips ($1 equals to 500 Kips - that was over
two thousand dollars) at times despite the fact their
own salary would never came that close, no matter how
high ranking they were.  Fortune lost, fortune gained.
 That was the nature of the game but the one who
always won was the house where the card was played. 
Each time, someone won the card, Ngeun Tong (money for
the place that held the card playing) was received. 
By the end of the night (in fact the early morning),
Ngeun Tong could amount to no less than one hundred
dollars.  That was a huge collection of money for a
poor country like Laos.  I would say that, like any
other things in life, the effect of a certain thing
was beyond our ability to conceptualize.  Three years
in Thakek were like hell to us, kids, smoke and noise
from the men and women played the card were
suffocating and deafening.  Imagine three births,
three Sukhouan and three excuses of any sorts to hold
the card playing could make us victims of the gambling
ourselves.  Luckily, out of my ten siblings (2 more
were added in Vientiane), only one fell victim to the
gambling.  Wonder if any Lao families with the same
situation could fare better than we were.

(to be continued)

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