2nd Annual European Food Festival in Vientiane

Back in May 2013, Vientiane had its 2nd Annual European Food Festival.  Organized by the expat community living there and with a desire to share more of European food to Lao people, the festival continues to attract more and more people each year.  Take a look at the video below from Lao National TV.

How Lao are you?

The following is a culmination of my many discussions I've had with family, friends and relatives in varying degrees of seriousness.  In particular it's from the perspective of Lao people living not in Laos but abroad and the question of how one's own personal conviction on culture and situation of living abroad have affected how Lao they and their families are.  It's an interesting topic I thought I'd share with readers today, as part of the Laoconnection.com Stories to Share Series.

Vintage Lao Movie - Red Lotus (bua daeng)

Want to see one of the first movie films every made in Laos after the Lao People's Revolutionary Party took over?

Check out this old vintage movie called Red Lotus (bua daeng).  As expected there's a political slant in this old black and white movie, where it's essentially about woman who will only be able to love freely once her village is liberated by the the communists.  But it has more...

Lao Language Buddhism Books - Free

Found a great website to download Buddhism material from and more importantly they offer some of their stuff in Lao language - for FREE.

It's an incredible Buddhist organization based out of Taiwan called The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation (www.budaedu.org).

Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient (BEFEO)

I found an incredibly useful resource, Persee.fr, that has archived all the BEFEO issues from this publication from 1901-2003 and has made them available for FREE.  Details and link are below.

BEFEO is the the publication that was created by a cultural research organization called l'École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO).  An organization which had been created by colonialist France over a century ago which to this day still has offices throughout Asia.  (* Read side note below if you're curious to know why they did this.).  The organization and publication still exist today.

Luangprabang Tourism Commercials

As many of you know well, the city of Luangprabang gets lots of attention and tourists.  Arguably no other Lao city receives the same treatment in terms of getting their very own commercials.  Here's a few that we found on Youtube.  They'll surely get you in the mood to want to visit, if you haven't already done so.

Lao Word of the Day: Need, Require

Does This Entice You to Want to Visit Laos?

Lao tourism commercial, April 2013, created and posted online by iSpot Travel.

2 Largest Lao Embassies Abroad

Curious little me, wondering which are the largest Lao embassies?  Out of all of Laos' embassies around the world, arguably the 2 largest are the ones located in Bangkok, Thailand and Washington, DC.  Pictures shown below.  Let us know if you think there are bigger ones out there.  By comparison, they also have some smaller ones such as the one in Belgium.

Lao Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.  Image Source:  Google Maps