They say that 1 in every 1 million people in Thailand have the chance to win first prize in a lottery, but what would you do if you won first prize? What would you want to buy once you got the prize money?
I’m going to talk about the lotteries in this article.
In historical terms, lotteries first appeared more than 2,000 years ago in China. Now, just about every country across the world has lotteries and Lotto, the lottery system based on your choice of numbers. For example, in the United States, they have Lottery (Powerball and Mega Millions), and in Europe they call it EuroMillions and EuroJackpot, while in Asia, they call it Lottery or Huay. The lotteries are very popular in Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
But I discovered that France is the country where it is easiest to win the lottery!!! Called Loto France, apparently you can win just by buying 1 lottery ticket.
Now I’d like to turn to the lotteries in Thailand, where I live.
In 19th-century Thailand, most rich people put their money in earthenware pots and buried them in the ground, so that money was taken out of circulation. But then after a while, deflation took hold, and they set up lotteries and started selling lottery tickets with the aim of reviving the economy. This plan brought money back into circulation and stimulated economic growth in Thailand, and then after the coup in 1932, it was decided that lottery tickets would be issued twice a month, on the 1st and the 16th.
So, I asked some Thai people “How do you win the lottery?” and “How do you choose your numbers?”
Everyone needs money, so they start looking for numbers that might win the lottery from about 1 week before the lottery tickets go on sale, on the 1st and 16th of each month. For example, they will do things like consulting fortune cards or looking for numbers in temples that house sacred objects. The most often used numbers are someone's birthdate, numbers that appear in a dream, your own favorite numbers, the favorite numbers of a deceased person, or the numbers on license plates. It is customary for people in Thailand to be quite religious, so the lotteries are a big topic of conversation, even among friends or people you don't know very well.
By the way, everyone who wins the lottery always offers up a garland of jasmine flowers and food (boiled pig head, boiled chicken, boiled eggs, fruit, and so on) to an image of Buddha, and goes to a temple dressed in traditional Thai dress to give thanks. Some people even dance or run around. I think the most interesting one is men running around a statue of Buddha naked!!!
I wonder if mine is the only country where people do this.
Do people do this sort of thing in other countries?
The fact is, I and the people I know have gotten lucky and won the lottery several times, but of course most of the time we don’t win. Still, what I think is that winning a lottery is a matter of good fortune, I don't think anyone can get really rich through the lotteries, which is like gambling, so I think it is better that you earn money only by earning it.
You know, Thai people often buy a lottery ticket when they are on their way back from visiting a temple. That’s because people believe that their own fate will be better by the fact of having gone to a temple and they will win the lottery. But in the end, I have no idea when these ideas took root in the daily lives of Thai people.
Is there a particular way of winning the lotteries in your country?
