Lao Voices

During my stay in Laos, I often browsed numerous magazines at the Morning Market in Vientiane and Pakse Market. I was very happy to see many magazines, printed for the younger generation. I can remember my mother and my aunts not having access to any Lao magazine in the late 80’s. Their only source of women’s magazines were from Thailand. My aunts often brought back some Thai magazines each time they went over the river for some shopping. It was forbidden back then to have a copy of foreign media if I can remember correctly. Some how my aunts didn’t get in trouble for having foreign media though and after they finished reading the magazines I was able to check them out.

Many things have changed since then. Lao teens have various choices to buy or subscribe to Lao magazines. There is even a magazine by the name of Vai Noum Lao or Laoteens Magazine. Other popular magazines that are geared toward the young people include Lao Update and Mahason. You can even find a magazine on Lao Tourism, published by the Lao Tourism Authority with the name of Mouang Lao Magazine.

While there are plenty of magazines to read, there are not that many subscribers for those magazines. Lao magazines still have to compete with many Thai magazines for around the same price. It’s not cheap for the average citizens to spend more than a dollar on a magazine. Why buy a magazine for 10,000 kips for example when you can buy enough frogs for that price to feed your family for one day?

I wanted to read some Lao magazines so I asked an aunt to buy some and send them to me. While the quality is not the same as magazines in the western world, it is a good start. You can find the same type of articles on love, family and parenting, entertainment, recipes, and lots of advertisements. Let’s give Lao magazines a few years and we just might see a few top notch magazines.