askchapo

I don't really have a specific question, I'm just wondering how Laos is. Do people have any thoughts, interesting facts, or information about it?

So the context is that I've been doing a re-watch of King of the Hill, where Hank's neighbor is Laotian, at the same time I've been listening to the latest season of Blowback, which is about the area formerly known as French Indochina, but more specifically Cambodia and Vietnam. They don't really talk about Laos much, which makes sense.

In King of the Hill though, there's a couple references to a communist dictatorship in Laos. I just finished an episode where a former guerilla veteran is trying to recruit Laotians in the US to go back and fight this government. One of the funny parts to me, is that whether that government is bad, or good but poor as a result of historical conditions, I see Kahn as the kind of person who would be wooed away to the USA with Hollywood images of the American Dream. He seems to work hard, but is obsessed with status, success, and commodities. Anyway, it's not a political show, so combined with that Blowback season, it's just enough information to get me curious lol.

I could review Wikipedia but it tends to be biased against communist nations, and I'd rather supplement boring scrolling of articles with interesting conversations. Especially since it's in the same general area as one of the most based communist parties I've studied so far (in Vietnam) and probably the worst one I've studied so far (the Khmer Rouge).