Passa Lao 101: your introduction to the Lao language

So, after three months, I have to say that learning Lao language has been both the biggest challenge and the greatest joy of my time in Laos. I studied formally for 6 weeks. During that time I was able to learn a lot of basics: how to read and write, basic phrases for simple conversation, etc. However, the majority of my learning has definitely come from living with my host family! Only a couple of them speak a little english, so that means every day brings ample opportunity to blunder my way through Lao conversations. Even though it’s difficult, I have come to LOVE it. Lately, I have even started thinking things in Lao when I’m on my own, driving my motorbike or running!! It is SO satisfying to have “successful” conversations with people (meaning they understood you and you understood them), whether it’s just a little exchange with the lady selling you your lunch, other teachers at Nita, or my host mom. When I was just beginning, it was hard to even get through two sentences, but I have come a long way since then. For example, just today I went to the Lao church in the morning and was able to sing the worship songs by reading the words on the projector and have a 30 minute conversation with a new friend – all in Lao!


But since you probably know nothing about this amazing language, I’ll take a few moments to tell you some basics:
- There are 26 consonants and 28 vowels and 6 tones
- The language is 100% phonetic (which is why I can now sound-out and read anything in Lao, even if I have no idea what it means)
- The script does read left to right (thank goodness!)
- The vowels can be found written either after, above, below, in front of, infront of and above, or in front, above, and after the consonant they are connected to. Luckily each vowel can only have one of these positions and it never changes.
- Syllables are the main focus of the language: all the rules about word formation and tone are determined per syllable not word.
- Verbs are not conjugated (also, thank goodness!): there are other little words you can add to indicate past or future tense…although in speech people often leave it out if the listener can understand from the context (for example, “yesterday I…” would not require adding a past-tense indicator, because, well, duh, yesterday is in the past)
- There is no distinction between “he” and “she” – both are simply referred to as “lao”
- Question words go at the end of the sentence (although there are a few exceptions to this…)
- When you are saying a number of something you have to add the appropriate “classifier” after the number. For example, to say I have 2 pencils you say “ khoy mee bpoom 2 gaan.” “gaan” is the classifier for pens and pencils. There are a billion different classifiers: for people (“kon”), for vehicles (“kan”)…for everything. And sometimes for really specific things. For example, “tuay” is for bowls of food, but “nuay” is for bowls without food in it…



I could go on and on (I just think it is SO interesting!) but instead I will leave you with just a could of my favorite things about passa lao (although this is super hard. I like so many….):
- I love that you add “Deuh” to the end of sentences if you want to make them extra polite.
- I love that you add a short, light “no” at the end of questions if you want to make them “friendly” (you also say it at the end of statements that you want agreement on, ie “muu nee hon laai, no?” “today is really hot, right?!”)
- I love that the verb for “to have a meal,” (“gin kao”) literally means “to eat rice”
- I love that there are some words with more than one meaning, like “hua” which means to laugh, head, and is the classifier for books
- I love that some words seem exactly the same…but are actually different tones and therefore different words. One of the most commonly used ones is “sai”: falling tone = to use, flat tone = to put in or on, rising tone = where. The funniest one is probably “muu”: rising tone = pig, flat tone = friend…
- One of my favorite new words is “pa-nyaa-nyaam” it means “try”


And, because it has been requested several times, I will leave you with the four words/phrases you couldn’t get by in Laos without: Sa-bai-dee (hello), Khop-jai (thank you, or khop-jai-deuh if you’re being very polite), Saeep (delicious! Whenever you eat anything, the Lao will ask you, “saeep boh?” and you’d better reply ‘saeep laai!” (it’s very delicious!), and last but certainly not least…boh phen nyang (you’re welcome/no problem). This is practically the Lao national motto. It definitely is used all the time and sums up their laid-back outlook on life.
Ok that’s all for now!
Phop gan mai! sook dee! (see you again/good luck = the two standard Lao good-byes)

The fun continues! Birthday Part 3: the "waterfall"

Ever since my first week at my host family, I had been told we would be going to the waterfall "this weekend." The trip was delayed for about three weeks due to some sickness in the family, rain, etc. On Sunday Sept 26th, the 8 passenger family van finally pulled out, loaded down with picnic food/supplies...and 12 people!

We arrived around 11am. There was no one there. As I found out later, everyone starts coming around 1pm. I guess we were just the early birds.
It did allow us to get a good picnic spot right near the river, though! If you can see from this picture, the park we went to had a bunch of these little picnic shelters with a concrete slab and a tin roof. We spread out our woven mats and had a fabulous picnic! We had...BBQ duck, sticky rice, spicy green papaya salad, bamboo soup, and fried maggots...a classic picnic really =)




Now, I dont know about you, but when I heard "waterfall," i was expecting...well, a waterfall. Instead, it ended up being a river with a few little tiny baby rapids.
This picture is from when we first arrived (hence, no one in the water). The river proved to be perfect for some mild tubing and just general splashing around! At one point we even laid down in a shallow area and just let the river rush by around us. There is nothing better than playing in a river on a hot day!!






When you did go floating down in the intertubes, you floated through this "jungle book" area, as I thought of it.
There were hanging vines four inches in diameter that you could swing on Tarzan-style and then splash into the river. It was a blast!

What none of these pictures could really capture was just how CROWDED it got by the middle of the afternoon! There were hundreds and hundreds of people along this quarter-mile or less stretch of river, both in the picnic shelters and in the river. It was insane!...and a really fun end to a great Lao birthday weekend.

Birthday Day 2: Buddha Park (Xieng Khuan)

SO the fun continued the next day with the MCC falang (foreigners). We all went out to brunch at Kung's Cafe for their famous mango sticky rice pancakes! SO GOOD! But I loved this place immediately. even before the food, because it is hidden away down a residential alley. When you get to the end of the alley, there is Kung's,. hidden behind a veil of jungle (see the pic of my friend Crystal walking into the cafe). The whole cafe is super small (five tables), outdoors under a tin roof shelter that doesnt seem like a tin roof because there are vines hanging from the ceiling and just plants everywhere! It's such a great atmosphere: and great food too!

After finishing our food, we headed down the road, 25k outside of Vientiane, to Buddha Park (or in Lao it's known as Xieng Khuan or "Spirit City". It is this grass area filled with hundreds (?) of stone sculptures inspired by Buddhist and Hindu mythology. They look like they are hundreds of years old...but actually, this park was designed and built in 1958 by an interesting "eccentric" yogi-priest-shaman man who was known for his fusion of Hinduism and Buddhism. Apparently he had a fairly large Lao following in the 1970s.
There are two large monuments in the park: the reclining Buddha and the huge stone orb (see pic below. ps. the girl in the picture is Becky!).


It has three levels: hell, earth, and heaven. The tree on top is the tree of life. If you enter through the mouth of the monster creature you can actually take tiny little passageways and steep stone stairs to climb your way to the top.
Each level is complete with stone carvings representing the three levels. What surprised me was how many snake carvings there were in heaven! That must be the Hinduism influence I guess...if that's an accurate depiction, I dont want to go to heaven!

Once you made it out, there was a GREAT view of the whole park!


There were a LOT of snakes represented in the park...here's a picture of me with one! I've gotten to the point that these stone ones don't actually bother me!

Here's the reclining Buddha...and if you look really closely...you might even see a "reclining Lisa"...

To beat the heat our crew took a little afternoon break at the park's one restaurant. (I love how cute these little huts are...but I have to say, they aren't the most comfortable places to sit...)
I ordered a coconut water...and it came in the largest coconut I had EVER SEEN! As thirsty as I was, I just couldn't finish it, heck, I could hardly carry it!

Lisa's 23rd Birthday: Lao style. Day 1

So, I'm a little bit behind on my blog updates. It's just SO hard to find the time at a computer when you're out having adventures and living the Lao life.
But I do want to share these experiences too! I think there is a balance...which I am still trying to find. Also, I think I just need to write shorter entries...I'll have to work on that, but there's just so much to tell!

i appologize for the pictures in this post...this computer doesnt let me look at them in the preview area, so i have to copy and paste the writing stuff (url?) into the text and i cant tell where it is going to end up!

As I was looking back at pictures to get ideas of things to share, I realized I never shared about my Lao birthday! It was actually a whole weekend of fun: fri, sat, sun! Friday September 24th was my real birthday! In the morning I went sinh shopping (the traditional Lao skirts) with Whitney and Touy because we were going to be attending a wedding on Oct 1st and needed a silk sinh AND a silk shirt, because that is what all the women wear to weddings. We had already had cotton sinhs but it was time to spend the big money (150,000 kip or ~$20) and get silk. Notice the HUGE selection of sinhs at just this one shop!!! and the most amazing part is that this was one of probably around 50 sinh sellers in this one market! not all sold these super bright silk ones, but it was still amazingly overwhelming walking through and trying to pick one!! We bought one here because the lady gave us a good discount. We were going to be her first customers of the day and it is a superstition amongst shopkeepers that if you can get a big first sale early in the day, you will have a good day of business for the rest of the afternoon. And selling two silk sinhs is a good first sale!!

Unfortunately, looking back, I regret the purchase. I should not have gotten a red one. It is just too bright and I can only wear it to very fancy occasions. If I had bought something with a more subtle color, I would feel a lot more comfortable wearing it and could even use it to teach or go to Lao church. Here is a pic of me (in the outfit purchased on my birthday) at the wedding:

Before heading to language school, I bought some lunch from some street vendors(my favorite thing!): a half a Vietnamese sub, two deep-fried bananas and two grilled bananas (the little baby-sized Lao bananas, maybe three or four inches long)...for a grand, tasty total of..$1 US. ahh, i love the exchange rate. I just don't think I'll ever be able to eat out in the US again! It'll just seem way too expensive! (Pheng poht!)

In Lao class we had a test. I did very well. I love tests.


After school Whitney and I stopped at our favorite little food market on the corner near the circus. It is just an empty lot during the morning, but round 3 or 4 o'clock all the vendors and carts start rolling in and by the time we get there at 5:15 it is a fabulous selection of street cuisine! Everything from chicken soup to doughnuts, fruit shakes to roasted pigs feet, and everything in between! For my birthday I got some of my favorite doughnuts and a "drink in a bag" of pineapple juice - with chunks of pineapple floating in it! yummmmm

I see from my journal here that I saw a family of 4 on a motorbike on my way home from Lao class on the afternoon of my 23rd birthday: mom, dad, and two kids under the age of 8 on one motorbike. of course, no helmets for anyone, either. They were going pretty slowly so they actually stayed near me (on my bicycle) for quite a while and I enjoyed waving to the kids, saying "hello!" and "sabaidee!" and laughing with them at this silly encounter we were having on highway. I love these random moments where I just have to smile and think "only in Laos..."

Dinner at my host family wasn't anything special (classic combination of fish, duck soup, and sticky rice) but they had cake for me after dinner! Their birthday traditions are pretty similar to ours (my host mom had her birthday just a week earlier: actually, counting me, my host family celebrated 6 birthdays in the first 6 weeks I lived there!).
They turn off the lights, bring in the cake with candles and sing "happy birthday" (same tune but they take out the "happy birthday dear [name]" and just say "happy birthday" twice in a row. simplifying it a bit). They go through the song twice: once slowly, clapping steadily...then the second time they do a crescendo, picking up speed until it ends in a flurry of clapping and cheering! Muan laai! (it's really fun!)

Funny family side-note: Anna, who is 4, gets her own small cake on other people's birthdays. and we light her own candles and everything. (you can see both of our cakes in the pic below) Apparently she gets really upset if someone else gets a birthday and she doesn't. She is definitely in the "temper tantrum" stage, so it's totally fine with me to do anything she wants, just as long as she doesn't start screaming and crying! Anna LOVES the birthday song too. She'll be singing it all evening once you get her started on it...


I got 2 presents on my birthday! Pauntip gave me my own Lao sarong to wear around the house like all the other women in my family. It's bright magenta with yellow flower-like designs. I wear it all the time! My host mom got me a yellow shirt to go with it. The only thing is...it's a polo shirt...that is about 4 sizes too big. I still wear it around the house, scrunching up the side with a hair tie so it doesn't feel quite so...roomy. They were very thoughtful gifts.