After reading Anthony Otomo’s article on Gambling in Cebu I started to get “the itch” for a bit of table action. So when Nick Gatsby and the Expat Player decided to take a quick trip to Phnom Penh I decided to tag along and hit a Cambodia’s main gamming center Naga World.
I hit a casino that was in an old rusting ship the last time I was in Phnom Penh (about 5 years ago) and it was a bit of a dump so I really wasn’t expecting much out of Naga World especially considering its silly Japanese theme park name. So when my moto taxi pulled in I was a bit shocked, it was actually a nice looking building complete with the standard casino flashing lights. So far so good I thought as I walked through the metal detector and ever present “no guns or explosives” sign you see all over Cambodia.
Ding, ding, ding, ding – Ahhhhh… the sweet song of a casino.
The inside looked like your basic Vegas off strip casino, not luxurious but not a dump by any means. I walked past the slot machines and into the table game area, Blackjack, Caribbean Stud Poker, Mini-Baccarat, Pai Gow Tiles, Roulette, Tai Sai all the casino usuals.
After looking around I sat at a 5$ to 100$ dollar Blackjack table, to my left, Chinese guys, to my right Korean guys. Yep, this is definitely a casino in Asia.
One thing sitting in the back of my mind was “is this game going to be straight?” so I started playing 25$ chips just to test it out, after an hour I was convinced that their wasn’t any funny stuff going on so I went to my usual level of betting 50$ and 100$ hands.
A few quick notes about Cambodian casinos:
-Anyone can put chips under another players bet that is equal to or less than whatever the sitting players bet is. Basically this means that any stranger can come up behind you at a table and toss a few chips behind your chips and bet with you. They can’t tell you what to do (like stand or hit) or generally make any decisions about your play. If you are “hot” someone will eventually do this.
-Cambodian casinos use the US Dollar for all bets and chip values. The USD has been the main currency in Cambodia because the UN paid everyone in USD wile they were there supervising the first elections back in the early 90’s.
-Drinks are free for sitting players
-Smoking is allowed at the tables
After playing for about thirty minutes I was up about 300$ bucks. Now here is where it got a bit odd.
Each table has a supervisor or manager sitting next to the dealer (I guess it’s to keep them honest). My table had a cute lady supervisor that immediately noticed that my bets were 5 to 10 times bigger than everyone else at the table and I was the only one tipping the dealer.
So she scooted around to my side of the table and said something to me in a heavy accent. I really couldn’t understand her so I had to keep saying “what? What?” until I finally figured what she was saying. Basically she wanted me to give my tip to the waitress and tell her to bet it (for the supervisor) under one of my hands.
I was like “ok, whatever” so I bet a few hands for her with the waitress acting as our proxy. I guess they aren’t allowed to do that or she just wanted to keep the tip instead of tossing it in the table tip bin and splitting it with the other supervisors and dealers. Pretty much every place in Cambodia is pushing some sort of angle on you but someone running a hustle at the table sort of took surprised me.
Around the time I was gambling the supervisors tips some cute Khmer* girl wearing nice makeup (most Khmers girls don’t wear makeup) was suddenly standing next to me acting all happy whenever I won a hand, she also spoke good English and Korean (also odd). At fist I didn’t think anything about it because there were already a few people watching me play.
Then it hit me that she was a casino ho, well casinos and hoin’ are like peanut butter and jelly so I just went with it and let her hang out and tossed her a few tips.
After a few hours I started playing silly (I always do that with blackjack) and I ended up giving back the 300 I won along with another 350$. But I really didn’t care, I have dropped 50 times that much at a casino before and didn’t have half the experience.
Overall I would recommend a day trip to Naga World to any Expat Rockstars living in or visiting Bangkok or Vietnam. The casino was pretty nice, the game straight, it is only an hour hop over from Bangkok and the “ladies” cute and friendly.
I didn’t stay at the attached Naga Resort Hotel or eat at the restaurants but next month Anthony Otomo and I are going to rent a suite there and check it out.
So look out for Part 2 of Naga World Casino Phnom Penh Cambodia in January
* Khmer = Cambodian
Naga World Casino
Junction of Tonle Bassac
Behind Cambodiana Hotel
Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh 12000
Cambodia
(Just tell the moto or taxi “Naga”)
General Information - +855 23 228 822
Hotel Front Desk - +855 23 215 831
Read All Gambling and All Cambodia Expat Articles
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE GAMBLING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BAAAAAAAANZAAAAAAAAAAAAI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Word, We will have to hit up the Naga next month son