Climate & gambling. Rain market

Gambling and online gambling have been illegal in Cambodia since 1996. It doesn’t mean that there are no casinos (that there are) but that Cambodian citizens can’t play. They could play slots, or slots, but they were banned in 2009 because of the rate of violence caused by the liabilities.
But there is still a kind of traditional bet and almost impossible to eradicate by the authorities. It is the so-called rain market or “chak teuk phliang“, a betting system on rainfall.

Action in the marketplace

A group of men meets in the market of Phnom Penh. They carry terrace chairs, plastic ones, and they settle in a part of the square. The brokers take walkie-talkie, perhaps faster than the telephone, and papers with registers.

Another larger group, the gamblers, discreetly move rail bills, the country’s currency.
Telephone in the ear, they try to connect with their informants.

Suddenly, a guy lifts his sunglasses and points to a point in the sky. A cloud. The adrenaline shoots between the group, it crosses what the polytones are, the buzz of the walkies and the cries of request of bet. It is 16:00 hours and it is the only cloud in the whole sky.

But this people knows that we are in the monsoon season and the most common is to receive rainfall by sunset.

Some of the players of the group, like Changzou, were already in this same place at dawn. The bets open at 06:00 and until 12:00 is the first division of the bets. The next section runs from 12:00 to 14:00 h. The last one ends at 18:00 hours. The most lucrative bets are those of the morning, with less chance of rain.

Changzou knew it, but still lost to the bet.

Change of location

Several of the morning losers then spoke and proposed to raise money for fuel and, in Changzou’s car, to go to the Thai border to see if any cloudy front appeared on the horizon. On the way back they remember how it was the Chinese who brought this tradition, now adopted by the Khmer.

Instead of going back to the shop, they decide to go to the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh, a meeting place for brokers and gamblers, where they have a privileged view of the sky. Which, by the way, is still clear.

At 17:40, the clouds begin to grow on the horizon. “Yes, these are rain clouds“, says Changzou as he pulls out his cell phone and calls one of his informants. The adrenaline returns and those who use the mobile are alónxanse of the rest, suspicious of being heard.
The boys of the walkies receive the last instructions. Changzou sweats, looks at the sky and breathes. He raises his voice and says “buy“, which means it’s going to rain. Logically, “I’m selling” means it’s not going to rain. Announces betting 25. ooo rails, change in europe, 5€. Avalanche of “buying and selling”, while nobody stops looking furtively, but continuously at the clouds approaching through the Gulf of Thailand.

A basic technology

If it rains after 6:00 p.m. it will return to the house with nothing. There are only a few minutes left and it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain, but one of the gamblers places the judge designated since ancient times on the floor. The paper of a newspaper, open in the middle and waiting for a signal.

The clouds are now just above his head, all with their eyes fixed on that stretch of sky, which now turns dark grey.

And while they wait, Changzou hears a slight “top”, they are almost imperceptible of a tiny drop of rain petting in the middle of the leaf of a cambodian newspaper….

How its work?

This same scene is reproduced all over Cambodia, without the authorities being able to do anything against a paper full of numbers and a copy of the day’s press. With no other games than the national lotteries, based on pure luck, the Cambodians can not resist a six-month monsoon season and even some of them march in the dry season to Malaysia, where the rains allow the unrolling of the game.
You can bet when the rain starts or ends, how many times it is going to rain in the day and even the amount of water collected in a period of time, which can be a day or a whole week. The bets are divided into three sections, from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m., from 12 to 2 a.m. and from 2 to 6 p.m. in the evening. The standard measure is the “drop in the newspaper”.

They comment that for the measurement of the amount of water have a meter the a “complex” rain gauge in a mansion on the outskirts, vixilated constantly. It consists of 13 layers of tissue paper on a table on the roof of the house. If the water passes through these layers, it “rained officiously.

It is said that…

It is played all over the country, but cities like Battambang are at the top of gambling, with gambling houses, professional gamblers, thousands of gamblers a day and a network of time informants and observers spread over areas of high visibility of the sky and even people who move to other areas to investigate the farthest clouds.

Extended play

Also in Taiping, in neighbouring Malaysia, the game is strong. Imported by sailors, it settled early in the country.

Many players take a ferry to Kuala Sepetang, where the view of the sky is better. Others have informants on the Thai border. Or you can sit back and dip a finger in your mouth to anticipate the wind.

The Internet is relegated as the last option. Fieldwork is the most valued. Having an active group of informants ensures accuracy.

Old accounts say that the game was forged in the tea fields of Guangdong Province in China. After the Revolution many crossed the border to Cambodia and took with them the “rain market”.

Rumors circulate that in Galicia there is a group of madmen of the same calaña, with more precise bets and grouped under the nickname of eltiempoentuojete. Do you know anything about them…?