The burning question of the day is: Is it Laos or Lao? The best answer is to take the Thai bar boy way out: It’s up to you. Experts all have their opinion and depending on who you listen to, either or both are the correct spelling. The locals seem to be as clueless and even the government spells it both ways. The best answer I could find was to spell it ‘Laos’ and pronounce it ‘Lao’, not necessarily because that was any more accurate than any other suggestion but rather seemed to be an even-handed, split the baby in half approach.

Before my most recent trip to SE Asia, I needed to get pages added to my passport. That meant calling the passport agency for an appointment. The helpful government employee I finally got on line couldn’t transfer me over to the automatic appointment line (that took four calls to accomplish) but went out of his way to be of assistance, asking a million questions, none of which I needed his help with. One was which countries I’d be visiting. So he could tell me about any necessary visas. I already had that info but played along anyway. (He sounded cute. And yes, I am that easy.) He did fine on Thailand. And only took an extra few minutes to figure out how to spell Indonesia. But Laos stumped him. He’d never heard of it and could not find it on his list. Duh. Turned out he’d gone for the third spelling option and had been hunting for the country known as Louse.

According to Wikipedia, the country was originally three Laotian kingdoms, so the French – who were no more successful in colonizing Laos than they were with Vietnam – called it Laos as a plural. What everyone does seem to agree on is that the people of both Laos and Lao are referred to as Lao. Or Laotians. Um, okay then, what everyone does seem to agree on is that the beer is called Lao.

The Thais I know all use Lao rather than Laos. The two languages, Thai and Lao, are similar and locals from both countries can understand each other. The Thai greeting of Sawatadee in Lao is Sabaidee; the genderizing kop or ka used in Thailand does not seem to be used in Laos. I noticed my Thai friend Noom used the Lao greeting, and then switched to Thai for conversations. Whether he spoke Thai or Lao the locals all seemed thrilled to be speaking anything other than English and greeted him warmly. Speaking the local lingo did not, however, give him an edge when bartering at the markets. No friendly neighbor discounts; he was still considered a touri and expected to pay visitor prices.

Many of the wats in Luang Prabang charge an admission fee. At least the larger more popular ones do. The fee is not much, usually around 20,000 kip per person (about $2.50). Locals, who use the wats as places of worship, are not charged the admission fee, nor are local guides shepherding groups of touri through the city. Noom quickly caught on to this price structure and faked being Lao to avoid paying the fee. And then, knowing me well enough, kept an eye out to make sure I didn’t pay his admission anyway – he’s quite frugal with my money; though it may come from my wallet he considers it our money when we travel together.

I kept an eye peeled at the markets for merchandise bearing the country’s name, figuring that would be the real test. Ah, the best laid plans. It was pretty much a draw, some stuff used Lao, some had the word spelled as Laos. I should known better, all the souvenirs in both Lao and Laos come from Thailand and are made in Vietnam. But then walking back to our hotel on our last morning in town, I found a local product proudly bearing an official Made In Laos sign, so that’s the spelling I’m going with: