Lottery winners share their winnings with family and friends, buy new homes, or use it to fund travels. Dokkeo told RFA that she is planning to use some of her money for travel to South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. “I want to spend some of it with my children and with my family,” she said. “I also want to invest in a property and have some left over to use for my next trip.”

Lao authorities rig national lottery drawings to avoid large pay-outs, sources tell RFA’s Lao Service. The numbers on purchased tickets often disappear from the drawing results before the official announcement. For example, on Oct. 14 this year, the winning number was 509, but it vanished from the national lottery ticket sales throughout the day and only showed up on purchased tickets an hour before the official drawing.

The state-owned lottery enterprise now issues the lotteries twice a week and stopped selling the scratch lottery, which requires buyers to remove paper from an envelope to see the number. After public complaints that the issuing of so many lotteries encouraged people to become addicted to gambling, the government reduced its offering.