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Primer: Floating Casinos For Singaporeans and Malaysians
The room was filled to the brim with silver-haired crumblies wearing faces torn between excitement and desperation. Hope curled up and disappeared into the ventilation system, as it mixed with swirls of cigarette smoke. I moved from table to table to first get a feel of the games that were being played. After the modern excesses of Macunian Casinos on the Cotai strip, my heart sank at the sight of the simple dealer tables before me.
Glacing out the window, I saw the ocean laid bare like a whore spreading her legs. It disgusted and excited me that I had been steered to the LongJie Floating Casino docked in international waters (where there is no law) by a pimp in the form of a junket boat. There is of course no other way to reach a floating casino. Relying on ‘agencies’ to bring the sheep over to their hills of green dealer tables, an interested bovine such as me need only pay a rolling fee of SGD300 to gain passage. Upon arrival at the ship, your identification card is surrendered for the duration of your stay, RM50 is returned to you and SGD300 of rolling chips is handed over, ensuring you must gamble at least that amount because they can’t be exchanged for cash.
In the hullaballoo of cacophonic noise in the casino, the PA speaker calls out regularly to announce the departure of junkets to Singapore and Malaysia. This tactic reminds people how long they’ve been playing and how much time they’ve got left - and creates a betting frenzy. Some of the old-timers trying to change their fortunes can zip from table to table, placing as many as 5 bets every 10 minutes. Such crumblies irritate the hell out of me as they bump into you with their oversized bags (filled with water, sweaters and whatnot). I prefer to play very very slow games - and my game of choice is Baccarat better known as Player-Banker. After about 30 minutes of observing different tables, I decide upon a table filled with (mainly) middle-aged male gamblers and park myself into one of the seats with a whiskey (on the rocks) for comfort.
Anybody with half a brain knows that cards and dice have no memory. The outcome of one hand has no effect on the next. The Chinese do not think so. The dealers are human, exported talent from China, primarily female and chosen for their buxom bosoms and comely features rather than the dexterity of their fingers. Unlucky dealers create patterns in Baccarat, which an experienced gambler with patience and deep pockets can spot. Once an unlucky dealer appears, I bet large. Very large.
Several hours later, I walk away a considerable more well-off hedonistic waste of youth. The restaurant serves a terrible buffet but great coffee, and I don’t complain because F&B isn’t supposed to be this ship’s core competency. Several shots of caffeine to the bloodstream later, I grab a bud light and exit to the pool area where unimportant burdens like the wives and children of busy gamblers are amusing themselves while waiting to finally go home.
Gambling is not a recreation that I regard as a team sport. One cannot win together but one can certainly lose together. I spot my companions looking glum by the pool and approach them. My companions had suffered great losses. Apart from losing their entire initial pot and couple more hundred bucks - they had lost their self-confidence and pride to the casino. I tell them that our 7pm ride back to mainland Malaysia had arrived.
Sitting on the top of the junket, with the sea breeze massaging my hair and face, one of my companions enquires how I did at the casino. Knowing better than to rub msg into a gunshot wound, I lied (for his sake, not mine) that I broke even.
A plane took off from Changi Airport in the distance, and I traced its ascent into the night sky with the stars twinkling bright behind it, while I smiled to myself like a grinning monkey.
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