Buk Nut wrote on 30^th Apr, 2017 at 12:49am:


Perhaps you could ask the Thais because they celebrate songkran.

We celebrate songkhan in Laos.

The spelling matters because it reflects how you say it. If I go around saying that I enjoyed my "songkran", everybody will think that I'm a Thai person.

We are not the same as the Thais, the Bangkok Thais wouldn't consider Laotians as the same as them.

Everybody on Earth is the same, we all have ears, eyes, nose, hands and legs, but our culture and language is different. Thai and Lao are different people in this regard.

The Lao New Year, or songkhan, was celebrated in a more respectful nature during the Lao Kingdom era.

You could walk on the streets and not be shocked to have trucks driving past and splashing water all over you from nowhere, or drunks dancing with music and alcohol beverages on every street.

In the past, people would approach you and say good wishes, then splash water for good luck in the new year.

Forget about the French, lets go back to ancient times when they weren't in Laos.

Laos is between 5 countries, that means that people from those countries would have crossed into Laos in history, so therefore Laos come from a common root from many countries and not just Thai.

Did you know that in early Lao history, King Fa Ngum married a Khmer princess, and 10,000 Khmer army crossed into Laos? That's a lot of Khmer people at the time to come to Laos.

If anything, Laotians have more of a common root to modern day Cambodians. They eat sticky rice and padaek (fermented fish) just like Laotians. Thais don't eat these things.

There's a lot of Vietnamese living in Laos these days too.

Asian people have yellow skin so we tend to get darker quicker when we're out in the sun than a typical light-skinned westerner.

Isaan people tend to be on the dark side because most people from that region are farmers or they spend a lot of time outdoors. If they're inside most of the time then they're not going to look dark.

There's plenty of dark-skinned people in central Laos too, particularly those in the sun such as labourers and Tuk Tuk drivers.

Laotians with light skin have some Chinese or Vietnamese in them, while those who are naturally dark have some khmer blood in them. But then again your skin color comes down to whether you spend most of your day inside or outside.

Laotians in Laos have no common roots to the Siamese, but Isaan people in Thailand have common roots to Laos.

mitch wrote on 30^th Apr, 2017 at 2:52pm:

That's good for you, because they like (I'm assuming you are) white western men, they see it as a sign of moving up in the world. At least the ones that aren't too shy to talk to you.

Bao Evil wrote on 2^nd May, 2017 at 2:03am: