Interesting Point. Everybody I have ever met coming from Buri-Ram / Surin or even further south call themselves as "coming from the Isaan" = ergo: Background "Khmer", not "Lao"-

Cgeers.

"You are a dummy".

Cheers.

Which the literal translation of 'dummy' in Khmer is 'Noel' ...... which upsets one of the ex-pats here and it does put a bit of a downer on Xmas

Interesting Point. Everybody I have ever met coming from Buri-Ram / Surin or even further south call themselves as "coming from the Isaan" = ergo: Background "Khmer", not "Lao"-

Cgeers.

Say that to my wife and see what happens

ask any lao issaan guys i know and see what they say about buriram kmer....this argument almost caused a riot at a morlum party in israel , between kmer and udonthani guys.......geeeezzzzzzzz.......

got predjudice in any place u go

if its not for one thing its for an other from skin colour to eating habits

does Som Tum originate in lao or issan - and who likes it hotter?

By the way, the PM's family name is Khu/Chiu (Teochiu/Mandarin) which doesn't sound anything like Shin/Chin in any dialect, not Kim/Jin.

Duh..... so why does he do that to his own name then?

Double standards....... it's always double standards out here

Duh, do what?

He didn't do anything to his own name. Likely it was his father's generation (if it wasn't his grandfather who changed it, not sure), and from the number of Shinawatras around, it was likely his father and several siblings who changed their last name from Khu/Chiu to Shinawatra. Still there, are plenty of those with the sae Khu last name around as well.

Rather than pick out cities to compare skin colour etc, one should be looking at the characteristics and culture of the peoples. Issan is Laos, they are from the same generic ancestory. Their langauge shares more than a few similarities, their food ditto, and their culture is very similar. The old 'morlum' and other 'Thai' traditional dances, if one was to do research, actually come from the Laos people.

The lower Isaan people have many similarities to the Khmer peoples. They don't speak the same language but this may have something to do with the fact they were born in a part of the land thatis now called Thailand.