As you all know, it's illegal to stay at a Lao girl's house unless you are married to her in Laos. Could one just get her a passport and take her to stay in Thailand together?

Well of course. There's no stopping Laotians from travelling to Thailand or any neighbouring country. It's much harder to travel to western countries because a sponsor is required.

In Laos, it's fine if you stay at her house provided that her family members also live there.

Yes but I read that it's illegal if they catch you sleeping in the same room/bed with her.

Well if you're staying at her place, and her parents also live there, then you have protection because they can tell the authorities that you're a guest. But then again, they probably wouldn't allow you to sleep in the same bed with their daughter under their roof unless you're married.

You can stay together in a hotel. The authorities rarely, if at all, do checks in rooms particularly in the expensive 4 or 5 star hotels. You can be vulnerable in guesthouses or other cheap accommodation places, but the worst-case scenario would be a fine if caught with a girl. How big or small the fine depends on how one negotiates.

Don't worry, we are not North Korea. You won't be executed for staying with a girl. We have prostitutes everywhere in Laos and nothing is being done about it.

Thanks for the response.

I was staying with a family in Laos and I had only known them for a couple days and they were already trying to push me to get married to their daughter. (They were probably poor and wanted my money is all )

They were asking for a dowry of only 1 million kip, or about 4,000 baht, which seemed like a great deal to me, but I had to refuse as I'm still too young to marry for a man.

Is the dowry really this cheap in Laos? I hope it stays this way and doesn't increase.

In Thailand it's always 100,000 Baht and up. Even prostitutes in Laos are only about 1,000 Baht, much cheaper than in Thailand.

All in all, Laos is the best place to find a girl in my opinion

1 million kip is basically nothing these days. That's just a bit over $100 USD to marry their daughter. Most people pay much more dowry than that, so her family must be very poor.

If Lao parents see a guy who is a foreigner, and have the potential to help them financially in the long term, they like to grab him quickly.

They may only be asking for only 1 million kip to have their daughter, but the chances are they will bother you and your wife in the years ahead, particularly if your wife have brothers and sisters who are still dependent on their parents.

I don't know, a lot of people I know paid 1 million kip for their dowry, but they were all from rural areas in the south of Laos ( Champassak, Attapeu, Xe Kong)

I'm not sure what the standard rate is in the city.

I have been to dine in restaurants around Vientiane for more than 1 million kip, it's nothing.

They have probably never held 1 million kip in their hand in their whole life. My parents wouldn't accept that kind of Dowry but I guess that's the standard rate in rural areas.

Again, her parents are probably thinking about the future, "just get whatever from him now, and we will get more from him later".

What is the average dowry in Laos?

As Saovaluck is saying, if you wanna sleep with a chick, take her to a 4-5 star hotel. It's cheaper in the long run. The police do target guest houses and they'll shake you down even in the countryside!

Buk Nut wrote on 4^th Sep, 2015 at 9:49pm:

Thanks for the response. I was staying with a family in Laos and I had only known them for a couple days and they were already trying to push me to get married to their daughter. (They were probably poor and wanted my money is all ) They were asking for a dowry of only 1 million kip, or about 4,000 baht, which seemed like a great deal to me, but I had to refuse as I'm still too young to marry for a man. Is the dowry really this cheap in Laos? I hope it stays this way and doesn't increase. In Thailand it's always 100,000 Baht and up. Even prostitutes in Laos are only about 1,000 Baht, much cheaper than in Thailand. All in all, Laos is the best place to find a girl in my opinion

It is only the best if you can speak Lao and understand the culture. Unless you've at least spent a year in Laos (time in Thailand doesn't count) then don't even think about marrying a Lao girl.

Admin Saovaluck wrote on 5^th Sep, 2015 at 10:26am:

I have been to dine in restaurants around Vientiane for more than 1 million kip, it's nothing. They have probably never held 1 million kip in their hand in their whole life. My parents wouldn't accept that kind of Dowry but I guess that's the standard rate in rural areas. Again, her parents are probably thinking about the future, "just get whatever from him now, and we will get more from him later".

So what kind of $ would your parents ask for admin  ;)

It depends on his financial situation.

Marriage isn't something that sits in the forefront of my mind because I live a busy life.

That is what you got for the wonderful time in Laos? :applause


TexasCowboy wrote on 19^th Jul, 2016 at 1:01pm:

Buk Nut wrote on 4th Sep, 2015 at 9:49pm: Thanks for the response. I was staying with a family in Laos and I had only known them for a couple days and they were already trying to push me to get married to their daughter. (They were probably poor and wanted my money is all ) They were asking for a dowry of only 1 million kip, or about 4,000 baht, which seemed like a great deal to me, but I had to refuse as I'm still too young to marry for a man. Is the dowry really this cheap in Laos? I hope it stays this way and doesn't increase. In Thailand it's always 100,000 Baht and up. Even prostitutes in Laos are only about 1,000 Baht, much cheaper than in Thailand. All in all, Laos is the best place to find a girl in my opinion It is only the best if you can speak Lao and understand the culture. Unless you've at least spent a year in Laos (time in Thailand doesn't count) then don't even think about marrying a Lao girl.

About knowing the language and culture, that's totally true. It allows you to filter through the shit, as most westerners I've met marry the most undesirable women from Southeast Asia, the kind the local men wouldn't even date.

That's who you usually have access to when you can't speak the language, but it's not always this way.

And also in Thailand there's a lot of police checkpoints between the Amphoes. If you're on a bus the police will come up and check everyone's papers. I've seen a lot of illegal Burmese, Laos and Khmers get deported this way.

I am  single. But Lao women can potentially be the best wives. They can also potentially be the worst! As you're saying, westerners usually choose women with a checkered history because they don't understand Laos.

I did have a great time in Laos but if you do ever decide to live in Laos then you need to leave the country every once in awhile. I'd also abstain from drinking. Laos is so different from the rest of the world and I am happy that I got to see the remnants of authentic Asia before it was destroyed by globalism.
I might seem very negative in my posts but this is mostly because it is clear that the once great Laos will be/are the dumping ground of Vietnamese and Chinese.

I'm sure the dodos were great animals, but where are they now? only the cunning and vicious end up surviving, just the way of nature.

Lao women also tend to get very jealous and controlling of their husbands, so it goes both ways. Women of any nationality can be good wives, even Western women ( maybe not Swedish/Scandinavian women because they're maxed out on that propaganda.)

Anyway I'm single too, and hopefully I'll be single for a while. I don't much enjoy all the commitment and responsibility that comes with being in a relationship.

I think I give the westerners in Laos a bit more credit than those in Thailand, because the ones in Thailand pick the women at the very bottom of the barrel, the prehistoric hobbit looking black skinned women who have been rode by every Brit, Aussie and Yankee in Pattaya, and they dump their life savings on them and buy them plots of land in "Esarn," as the 90 year old, 500 lb white men call it.

I'd say the average Westerner in Laos is definitely better than what you'll see anywhere in Thailand or Cambodia. Most of the westerners in Laos are either living there because they married into the society or they are working for a NGO or are just tourists.

But there are too many intolerable westerners in Asia nowadays. Especially in Cambodia.

I haven't been to Cambodia in a while also my family discourages me from going there, saying Khmers are very violent and will kill you over a small conflict. Is there any truth to this? I take everything they say with a grain of salt but I'd still be a bit wary of going to Cambodia alone, as I've heard some horror stories.

Just wondering about the levels of poverty in Cambodia versus Laos as well. Which country seems more impoverished and destitute? I've heard about a lot of horrible stuff that goes on in Cambodia but that might just be because it's not tightly controlled like Laos.

The major drawback in Cambodia is the number of dodgy tourists and hence the number of dodgy local hustlers. If you can get off the beaten track then you will find that the people are incredibly friendly. The people in the bus industry are horrible and you can tell that there are a lot of hardened criminals and drug addicts walking around the red light district. The simple solution is of course to avoid these areas or if you're interested in the seedy side of things like me, then just limit yourself to Coca Cola and avoid drinking alcohol or taking drugs. A lot of people have had their belongings stolen or their phones snatched. I haven't had any issues but I do take basic precautions and generally try to avoid walking around alone late at night. In other words, it can be dangerous but most of the dangers can easily be avoided.

The Khmer are some of the most tolerant and non-judgmental people around and it is actually often times to their detriment. It is generally difficult to really piss off a Khmer. But they will use violence if somebody is really upsetting them. Khmer are definitely more open and relaxed around foreigners and it's easy to shoot the breeze with them. There are also a number of clever Khmer who can hold an interesting conversation.

There are probably more extreme levels of poverty in Cambodia.

I'm interested in it all, man. That's the only way you can get the complete, unbiased picture of a country. Phnom Penh seems to be rather westernized and filthy, with a lot of the 'high Siamese' behavior, such as kids going to international schools who only know how to speak English and not even Khmer.

Anyway, how do you usually enter Cambodia? I've heard there are buses from Pakse to Steng Treung, or as the Lao call it, "Xiang Taeng."

They say  Khmer is hard to learn, English is easy to learn. They pay education, they pick up the profit making one. ;D


Buk Nut wrote on 23^rd Jul, 2016 at 11:53pm:

I'm interested in it all, man. That's the only way you can get the complete, unbiased picture of a country. Phnom Penh seems to be rather westernized and filthy, with a lot of the 'high Siamese' behavior, such as kids going to international schools who only know how to speak English and not even Khmer. Anyway, how do you usually enter Cambodia? I've heard there are buses from Pakse to Steng Treung, or as the Lao call it, "Xiang Taeng."

Lol yeah except Khmer is not actually hard to learn. I speak Thai and Lao and I could learn Khmer in just a couple months.

If you're Khmer and born and raised in Cambodia then you have no excuse for not being able to speak Khmer. I'm not talking about international students either, but Khmer students taken to an international school in Phnom Penh by their parents.

What would you say if Chinese parents only allowed their child to learn English and not Mandarin/Cantonese? How would they even function in China? Khmer should be no different.

You can go from Pakse to Steung Treng but be sure to bring your dollars. a lot of people in banlung and stung treng can speak lao or at least some lao.

It takes more than a couple of months to speak Khmer. It's not difficult and it shares a lot of loanwords/cultural roots with thai and lao but it's still going to take awhile before you're reading a book. hell i can't really even read a book in khmer. it would probably take at least a year of dedicated study to get to that point.

TexasCowboy wrote on 26^th Jul, 2016 at 1:46pm:

You can go from Pakse to Steung Treng but be sure to bring your dollars. a lot of people in banlung and stung treng can speak lao or at least some lao. It takes more than a couple of months to speak Khmer. It's not difficult and it shares a lot of loanwords/cultural roots with thai and lao but it's still going to take awhile before you're reading a book. hell i can't really even read a book in khmer. it would probably take at least a year of dedicated study to get to that point.

Can I use baht in Cambodia, or is it better to just use dollars? One of my Lao friends said only the old people in Stung Treng can speak Lao which kinda irritated me, because I know the young people speak it too, but they tend to not be able to read it like the older generation.

About me speaking Khmer, let me explain. I can't speak fluently, I can communicate basic ideas. I learned the alphabet so I could read an entire book phonetically but I won't know the meaning of a lot of words, so I have to look them up in a dictionary. I think I could be fluent in reading Khmer and speaking it with about 12 months in Cambodia or maybe a little more. I have a Khmer news app on my phone that I used to read the news on and I'd just look up every word I didn't understand, but I haven't had time lately.

With your background in Khmer, it won't be difficult to pick up the language. Even I struggle reading the news in Lao because there are no dictionary entries for many of the words. I am probably at the same level as you in Khmer and hope I will have more motivation to study it. I need to stop wasting time reading about politics and talking to stupid expats and start hitting the books more.

Phum Dictionaries (the Khmer version) for android is actually very good. There's a lot of very good mobile apps for learning Khmer, strangely.

Lao language learning material is lacking, and the dictionaries are incomplete. I think if you want to learn academic Lao you should just learn Thai because 90% of the terms are the same. It's just day to day stuff that differs between Lao and Thai, but as the terminology gets more advanced the overlaps increase substantially. If I didn't learn Lao growing up then I don't think I would've been able to with the limited resources on the internet and elsewhere.

One language I've found very difficult to learn has been Burmese. The grammar and such are actually very different from Thai, Lao and Khmer. Burmese, Lisu, Lahu and Akha actually share the same grammar if I'm not mistaken. Also there's a lack of resources. I plan to learn Burmese at a language school in Thailand.

Mandarin Chinese? Been studying it a bit, I have to say it's a piece of cake with the exception of all the characters you have to memorize. Resources are immense.

Chinese is easy but to acquire advanced level grasp of Chinese is arduous. The resources are great but it's just a daunting task because there is so much to learn.

So where's a good place/website to talk to expats? They often have valuable knowledge about business and certain laws

Expats for which country? And most expats posting on forums are full of crap!

Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam. The usual. I mean any good forums about Southeast Asia. I would google them myself but the sites I've found haven't been that good. Just looking for other people's opinions. I've been on Thaivisa but I found it has too many members and its too focused on Thailand exclusively, and just ends up not being interesting. A forum with locals participating too would be more interesting. Thaivisa is all just expats.