An obese woman crossing the road in Vientiane.
Obesity in Laos is still rare.

http://www.laopride.com/pictures/laopride98.jpg

LOL, so common in America though. I think Alexandra Bounxouei's mother would qualify as obese.

That's a huge b*tch...

I think in asia, they have the opposite disease, tooth pick worshipping.
I often asked my friend while I was there if people had enough food to eat cause they looked so skinny, even the guys. The most popular diet at the time was not eating dinner diet.

I think that picture you took was of an american tourist visiting laos. My question is, how did she get on that plane in the first place?

Very rare to see obesity most places in Asia. Here in the USA, it is very common and I hang my head in shame at the citizens of my own country.

I think she lives in Vientiane because I've seen her on a number of occasions. She is a tom.

The guys in Laos tend to look skinny but their body is firm and not saggy like we often see with westerners. The foods in Laos is not oily and fatty.

Admin Saovaluck wrote on 5^th Aug, 2009 at 12:19am:

The guys in Laos tend to look skinny but their body is firm and not saggy like we often see with westerners. The foods in Laos is not oily and fatty.

Very true admin. I always lose weight when staying in Asia, but gain it back when staying in the US. I am not heavy by any means, but I see a difference in my weight depending on where I am living.  

http://www.laopride.com/pictures/laopride454.jpg

When I went shopping in the "Dalat Saow" in Vientiane, I was looking for jeans and shirts for my brother and brother in law and they are like big boys but not as fat as some of the fat asses that you can find here. They are around 5 feet 8 inches tall and weigh around 190 lbs with waist sizes of around 34 inches. So I was looking at some jeans and they were all below 30 inches and I asked them for larger sizes like 34 and they asked me who are these for, what monsters are they? It was like they couldn't believe people could be so large even though I myself was a 32 waist and thought that to be normal. Then I tried on a medium sized shirt and almost couldn't get my arms through the holes, but I will admit I do work out but these clothes were designed for smurfs. Clothes were very cheap there, I bargained for a pair of fake jeans that they wanted 200k kips for and got it down to 120k kips which is like $12 US. I felt bad for them so I didn't bother to bargain too much, it seemed like their life depended upon making their quota for the month and surviving. They also praised me for my ability to count money efficiently even for being someone from outside of the country. Oh yeah, get used to counting a lot of bills, even to buy simple things cause I felt like I had robbed a bank when I went to exchange my money for kips. Someone told me to bring a bag which turned out to be a good thing, cause I needed it to carry all those bricks of money. I hated carrying money while I was in Laos, it was so inconvenient, I had to bring a man purse with me cause of the amount of bills I had to carry, and when you pull that huge wad of cash out, everyone can see it, baller!

Clothing sold in Laos is usually small otherwise the merchant won't make a sale. Most clothes are imported from Thailand so try not to bargain too much (if you are a foreigner) because they need all the profit they can pinch off you guys. There's alot competition in the Morning Market and not to mention the cost of renting the area so they are really desperate to make a sale.

Thai Baht and US dollar notes can be a convenient alternative to kips. They are accepted just about everywhere in Laos, so maybe you should carry those if you are planning to go shopping for something expensive. Keep some kips with you for small items.

120,000 kips isn't alot of notes to count if you had 50,000 kip notes.

Maybe you had small notes with you?

I exchanged 100 USD and I got a bag full of money. They were 5,000 kip bills and the exchange came out to be about 1 million kips at that time. Each brick of money was neatly folded and packed into 25,000 kips I think and one brick was I think 250,000 kips so I had 4 of these bricks of money. It was actually worse when I went to break a thousand USD. All these places only gave us money in 5,000 kip denominations but they were neatly folded like I said, if you take off the elastic then you got to watch out that the money doesn't get unorganized, then you will be counting. I was wondering if they had any larger bills than 5,000 but the largest bill I saw was a 20,000 kip bill. They should make a 100,000 bill and even a 1 million kip bill, then I could fit that in my pocket. I sometimes like carrying around bricks of money sometimes cause it made me feel rich.

The highest denomination note in Laos is now 50,000 kip. Most places hand those out.

The smallest note is 500 kip, that used to be alot of money 15 years ago.

$100 US is now only worth 850,000 kips.

I think it would be more convenient if they made notes in 1 kip, 2 kip, 5 kip, 10 kip etc. Big numbers is pointless.

You haven't seen FAT til you have come to the US!