"You can just speak Thai. It's all the same language - about 90 percent is the same. People here understand Thai," the nice Lao man told me at breakfast this morning.
The problem is I've been focused on the other 10 percent. That's because I know about 3 of that 10 percent already. Thailand's northeast Isan provinces speak a Lao influenced dialect and when I lived in Bangkok and learned Thai - I took a special interest in the Isan dialect.
Being here, I've realized there are more little words and phrases that I didn't know. And most of them are little things - but very everyday stuff. Like the word for "no" is "bo" not "mai" as it is in Thai. The magic word that when placed at the end of a sentence makes anything you say polite is "jao" in Laos, not "krup" like I'm used to. Small things. And it's not like they don't know what "krup" is and how it works.
I'm just stupidly determined.
Ever since we've gotten here, I ask questions. I've enlisted waiters, waitresses, hotel staff and people sitting at the next table at breakfast to help me with Lao phraseology. The cool part is - they're more than willing to help. Mostly.
Yesterday, I bought a cold bottle of water when Emily and I were walking around town. I pulled out my "jao", "bo" and "kap jai lai lai" (Lao "thank you"). I got a laugh - which is usually a good sign. Thais and Lao love to laugh and often find a foreigner speaking their language to be very funny.
This led to a conversation about us and what we were doing. They asked how long I had lived in Thailand and what we were doing in Vientiane. I thought I had broken the barrier and was in with the locals.
Then one of the women said in the nicest of ways, "You speak Thai very well."
"I'm trying to speak Lao and improve with it."
"You speak Thai very well."
Message received.
Naturally, this only made me more determined to figure out what was wrong with my dialect and to try to improve it so that I reach the "inner circle" before we leave Laos.
But it's harder than I imagined. It turns out I'm used to certain Thai phrases that would require rewording. My language brain doesn't want to mess with hard earned phrases and so, I keep spitting out Thai.
When I catch myself, it all comes out jumbled and I confuse the people I'm talking to. Then I stare intently to see if my sentence worked or not - and they feel awkward, so I feel awkward, and then we've all gotten nowhere.
This is probably why I should listen to the nice Lao man who is staying at our hotel because he's visiting from the Netherlands, where he now lives and works. Give up the "bo", "jao" and "kap jai lai lai" - stick to what I know. Let sleeping Lao lie.
"We're all the same people - the Isan people and us," the man told me. "We speak their language and they know how to speak ours. It doesn't matter."
We'll see....
Unsurprisingly, I don't falter when it comes to food. And thank goodness for that because it wouldn't be our blog if I didn't write in detail about what we eat. After all, this is half the reason I know any Lao dialect in the first place.
The people of the poor Isan provinces often make their way down to Bangkok and tourism areas around Thailand for better jobs and opportunities. They don't have much to bring with them except their kindness, willingness to work hard and abilities to make fantastic food from their homelands.
Although they aren't the dishes that Americans frequently get in Thai restaurants, Isan - and therefore Lao - foods are a favorite throughout Thailand.
At the heart of Lao cuisine is Emily's favorite - som tam. This spicy salad is made of grated unripened papaya, chilis powerful enough to make Emily fear passing out, peanuts, green beans, grated carrot, garlic, tomatoes, palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice and optionally, dry baby shrimp, blue crab and fermented fish paste. Emily and I make sure to leave out these last three.
The rest, Emily eats like an addict. Three chilis and she's happy with how her mouth burns. Four chilis and she feels like she's breathing fire like a dragon. Five chilis and she fears fainting.
When I lived in Bangkok, I ate som tam at least six days a week, if not seven. It's fantastic.
Traditionally, som tam is accompanied by sticky rice, raw green vegetables and either gai yang (seasoned barbecued chicken) or grilled salted, seasoned river fish. I'm a gai yang man, myself and Emily occasionally joins me for it.
Lao people love salads. Only they define them a little differently than we do. If it's chopped up, mixed together and served cold - it's a salad. However, most salads are meat-based. Larb is minced chicken or pork with cilantro, basil, shallots, garlic, lime juice and assorted other spices. Nam tok - meaning waterfall - is a spicy beef salad that when done right can make you feel like your tongue disintegrated. When ordering it for a foreigner, I always have to ask for it to be toned way down.
There are also a hundred varieties of fried green vegetables including river weed from the Mekong and famous Lao garlic sausages made from either pork, chicken or fish.
Sure, they'll fry some rice and they'll make some Thai food if you want it. But Lao food is fresh and simple. Flavors always employ lots of spice balanced with citrus - usually lime. It's all about grilling, chopping, dicing and make it hot enough to force MacArthur's surrender.
And like their Thai brethren - the Lao like to eat a little, all the time. They even talk about what to eat next when they have nothing else to talk about.
On the way from the border to our hotel, three Lao ladies jumped into our songthaew (truck with two covered benches in back). They spent most of the ride talking about which vendors at the market make the best foods and how they needed to get there in time before a certain salad-maker ran out of a particular salad.
"Delicious! Delicious! No one makes it her way!" one said. "We have to get there before 10:00 when she closes!"
"Is it that good, because there's another guy who makes it very good with lime..." another said.
"No, you're joking. This lady's is the most delicious!"
Sadly, I couldn't decipher which vendor or salad they were talking about.
The only thing they eat one thing that's a complete disconnect from the rest of their cuisine: baguettes with laughing cow cheese and pate - a little leftover from the French. The Lao sell baguettes at the market and from street side stands. Unlike the Vietnamese, they don't make such complex sandwiches - just cheese, pate and some veggies. These are only for breakfast or lunch.
By dinner time, there's no room for anything that isn't chopped, grilled and spicy. It's always kind of amazing that these mellow, mellow people eat such dramatically spicy food. It's like their challenge in life is to keep calm and cool while Rome burns to the ground....in their mouths.
In this way, Emily has found her comfort food. She has proclaimed that in Laos and Thailand she wants som tam every single day. Yesterday, she caught up with four plates of it. This morning her stomach caught up with it with some serious indigestion. Nonetheless my wife remains as constant and undeterred as the Lao themselves.
The problem is I've been focused on the other 10 percent. That's because I know about 3 of that 10 percent already. Thailand's northeast Isan provinces speak a Lao influenced dialect and when I lived in Bangkok and learned Thai - I took a special interest in the Isan dialect.
Being here, I've realized there are more little words and phrases that I didn't know. And most of them are little things - but very everyday stuff. Like the word for "no" is "bo" not "mai" as it is in Thai. The magic word that when placed at the end of a sentence makes anything you say polite is "jao" in Laos, not "krup" like I'm used to. Small things. And it's not like they don't know what "krup" is and how it works.
I'm just stupidly determined.
Ever since we've gotten here, I ask questions. I've enlisted waiters, waitresses, hotel staff and people sitting at the next table at breakfast to help me with Lao phraseology. The cool part is - they're more than willing to help. Mostly.
Yesterday, I bought a cold bottle of water when Emily and I were walking around town. I pulled out my "jao", "bo" and "kap jai lai lai" (Lao "thank you"). I got a laugh - which is usually a good sign. Thais and Lao love to laugh and often find a foreigner speaking their language to be very funny.
This led to a conversation about us and what we were doing. They asked how long I had lived in Thailand and what we were doing in Vientiane. I thought I had broken the barrier and was in with the locals.
Then one of the women said in the nicest of ways, "You speak Thai very well."
"I'm trying to speak Lao and improve with it."
"You speak Thai very well."
Message received.
Naturally, this only made me more determined to figure out what was wrong with my dialect and to try to improve it so that I reach the "inner circle" before we leave Laos.
But it's harder than I imagined. It turns out I'm used to certain Thai phrases that would require rewording. My language brain doesn't want to mess with hard earned phrases and so, I keep spitting out Thai.
When I catch myself, it all comes out jumbled and I confuse the people I'm talking to. Then I stare intently to see if my sentence worked or not - and they feel awkward, so I feel awkward, and then we've all gotten nowhere.
This is probably why I should listen to the nice Lao man who is staying at our hotel because he's visiting from the Netherlands, where he now lives and works. Give up the "bo", "jao" and "kap jai lai lai" - stick to what I know. Let sleeping Lao lie.
"We're all the same people - the Isan people and us," the man told me. "We speak their language and they know how to speak ours. It doesn't matter."
We'll see....
Unsurprisingly, I don't falter when it comes to food. And thank goodness for that because it wouldn't be our blog if I didn't write in detail about what we eat. After all, this is half the reason I know any Lao dialect in the first place.
The people of the poor Isan provinces often make their way down to Bangkok and tourism areas around Thailand for better jobs and opportunities. They don't have much to bring with them except their kindness, willingness to work hard and abilities to make fantastic food from their homelands.
Although they aren't the dishes that Americans frequently get in Thai restaurants, Isan - and therefore Lao - foods are a favorite throughout Thailand.
At the heart of Lao cuisine is Emily's favorite - som tam. This spicy salad is made of grated unripened papaya, chilis powerful enough to make Emily fear passing out, peanuts, green beans, grated carrot, garlic, tomatoes, palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice and optionally, dry baby shrimp, blue crab and fermented fish paste. Emily and I make sure to leave out these last three.
The rest, Emily eats like an addict. Three chilis and she's happy with how her mouth burns. Four chilis and she feels like she's breathing fire like a dragon. Five chilis and she fears fainting.
When I lived in Bangkok, I ate som tam at least six days a week, if not seven. It's fantastic.
Traditionally, som tam is accompanied by sticky rice, raw green vegetables and either gai yang (seasoned barbecued chicken) or grilled salted, seasoned river fish. I'm a gai yang man, myself and Emily occasionally joins me for it.
Lao people love salads. Only they define them a little differently than we do. If it's chopped up, mixed together and served cold - it's a salad. However, most salads are meat-based. Larb is minced chicken or pork with cilantro, basil, shallots, garlic, lime juice and assorted other spices. Nam tok - meaning waterfall - is a spicy beef salad that when done right can make you feel like your tongue disintegrated. When ordering it for a foreigner, I always have to ask for it to be toned way down.
There are also a hundred varieties of fried green vegetables including river weed from the Mekong and famous Lao garlic sausages made from either pork, chicken or fish.
Sure, they'll fry some rice and they'll make some Thai food if you want it. But Lao food is fresh and simple. Flavors always employ lots of spice balanced with citrus - usually lime. It's all about grilling, chopping, dicing and make it hot enough to force MacArthur's surrender.
And like their Thai brethren - the Lao like to eat a little, all the time. They even talk about what to eat next when they have nothing else to talk about.
On the way from the border to our hotel, three Lao ladies jumped into our songthaew (truck with two covered benches in back). They spent most of the ride talking about which vendors at the market make the best foods and how they needed to get there in time before a certain salad-maker ran out of a particular salad.
"Delicious! Delicious! No one makes it her way!" one said. "We have to get there before 10:00 when she closes!"
"Is it that good, because there's another guy who makes it very good with lime..." another said.
"No, you're joking. This lady's is the most delicious!"
Sadly, I couldn't decipher which vendor or salad they were talking about.
The only thing they eat one thing that's a complete disconnect from the rest of their cuisine: baguettes with laughing cow cheese and pate - a little leftover from the French. The Lao sell baguettes at the market and from street side stands. Unlike the Vietnamese, they don't make such complex sandwiches - just cheese, pate and some veggies. These are only for breakfast or lunch.
By dinner time, there's no room for anything that isn't chopped, grilled and spicy. It's always kind of amazing that these mellow, mellow people eat such dramatically spicy food. It's like their challenge in life is to keep calm and cool while Rome burns to the ground....in their mouths.
In this way, Emily has found her comfort food. She has proclaimed that in Laos and Thailand she wants som tam every single day. Yesterday, she caught up with four plates of it. This morning her stomach caught up with it with some serious indigestion. Nonetheless my wife remains as constant and undeterred as the Lao themselves.
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