Sao Lao

Unlike the US, most students here take public transportation to school. I take the train and the bus, when the train is not running. When I get to the campus, I walk, walk and walk. The university doesn’t have one big campus like in the US so you can get from one building to the next easily. Walking from one department to another can easily take half an hour. Try that when it is raining or snowing.

To make life easier, most foreign students would buy a use bicycle. It can range from around 100 Euros to hundreds, depending on what you want. Having a good lock is a must. A Korean classmate’s bike was stolen because she didn’t buy a lock fast enough. Another classmate with a good lock had one of her tires stolen. I guess someone needed a spare tire and decided to borrow one from her and never to return it.

My new friend and I went to get his bike after the first day of class. It didn’t come with a lock or even a parking gear. The tail light was missing so he needs to update his bicycle a bit. It is a good bike though and I sat there while he peddled to the administration’s building and to the bookstore. What a gentleman.

Of course I didn’t want my new friend to take me back to the train station so I told him I would take a bus instead. But after a few minutes of standing there waiting for the bus, the sun came out and I decided to take a nice long walk back. I like to walk because I can look at things and take my time to take pictures along the way.

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Is it possible for the dead to speak to you in a dream and tell you to buy the winning lottery number? I would answer that it is possible based on my experience. I will tell you about a particular dream that I would never forget for as long as I am still alive.

In Laos, my mother would buy lottery number, Lao lottery as well as Thai lottery. People in Laos play the Thai lottery by using the last three winning digits of the Thai lottery. I think it was underground lottery system but just about everyone I knew were selling and buying Lake Sarm Tho (three numbers lottery).

My mother won a few times, but only in small amount. One night I had a dream that I was playing on Wat Tad Luang’s ground. It was during the annual festival and there was a Faris Wheel right in front of me. The place was empty so being a little kid I started to walk around. Then I saw an old man, who could be someone’s grandfather. He called my name to go to him. He said he wanted to help me, to make my life better and told me to look up at the Farish Wheel. I saw two sets of number, glowing in red color light bulbs. This kind old man said to tell my mother of those numbers and all our lives would be better.

The next morning I woke up and went to my mother’s room to tell her about the dream. Since I was just a little kid I didn’t know how to tell her the two sets of numbers and I wrote them down backward for her. The set of numbers were 250 and 160. Of course being a stupid kid, I wrote down 052 for her but then 160 for her for the second set. Why would anyone write down numbers backward to begin with?

My mother bought the first set of lottery numbers, 052 and 250. Guess what? She won baskets of Lao kips for the winning 250 set. She was able to buy a refrigerator, invested some money for her pharmacy, and finance our chicken farms. She later won the second set of lottery number 160.

Our winning streak didn’t just end there. My brother Hanh had a dream later about an old man who came to visit him. The nice old man pointed to the license’s plate of my mother’s motorbike. The set of numbers became red. Hanh told my mother about the dream the next morning. I can’t recall the numbers. But one thing for sure, my mother won her third biggest winning pot for Thai lottery (Lake sarm tho).

My mother said it was my Grandfather that came into my dream. She said he must have been worried about us and wanted to help us. At the time there were talks of him haunting people at his old house in Vang Vieng. That is another story all together and I will post for Nye.