Word: lao
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...Xang. A branch of the Thai peoples, the Lao were driven out of southern China by Kublai Khan in the 13th century and fled south to the valleys of the Mekong behind a legendary king, Khun Borom, who rode "a white elephant with beautiful black lips and eyelids." There was, a century later, a brief foray at empire. King Fah Ngum, born with a set of 33 pointed teeth, grabbed all of present-day Laos and part of Thailand by elephant charge and labeled it all Lan Xang Horn Khao, "Land of the Million Elephants and the W'hite...
...indolent Laotian manner to create a unified nation. The Lao stuck to the lush valleys, where the living was easy, and lorded it over the darker, aboriginal inhabitants who are still known in Laos today as Kha (slaves). To the hills came a fierce assortment of immigrants: Black Thai and White Thai, Yao and Youne and Meo. Adept with the poisoned dart, the crossbow and the animal pit, the 80-odd hill tribes dislike the valley-dwelling Lao and number about half the country's 2,000,000 population...
...home at the age of ten. He attended a lycée in Montpellier, got a degree from Paris' Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, where French diplomats were trained. After a decade, Savang Vatthana returned home both flattered and baffled by the experience. He no longer could speak Lao, and had to be instructed by a palace functionary for years...
...countryside rule the country." Prince Souphanouvong, though fuzzy on his Marxism, took the guerrilla lessons to heart. Equipped with a pair of black boots, Viet Minh aides and money, he marched off into the northern Laotian provinces, and in the next three years formed the nucleus of the Pathet Lao...
...time the French surrendered at Dienbienphu and the Geneva Conference declared Laos a neutral state, the "Red Prince" had established Pathet Lao control firmly in the two mountainous provinces of Samneua and Phongsaly...