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'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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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