Laos Emoji & Symbols

The Laos flag emoji 🇱🇦 shows three horizontal bands, red, a double-width blue and red, with a white disc in the middle. The usual reading is that red stands for the blood shed in the struggle for independence, blue for the Mekong River and for prosperity, and the white disc for the full moon over the Mekong, which is also read as the unity of the people. It was first used by the Lao Issara independence movement in 1945 and became the national flag on 2 December 1975, when the Lao People's Democratic Republic was proclaimed; it is one of the few flags of a communist-ruled state with no star or hammer and sickle on it.

Like every country flag emoji, 🇱🇦 is two regional indicator letters, 🇱 and 🇦, for the code LA. Phones, Macs and most browsers join them into a flag; Windows has no flag pictures in its emoji font and shows the letters LA instead. 🌕 on its own is a handy way to echo the flag where it does not show.

People searching "lao flag elephant" are thinking of the older flag. The Kingdom of Laos, until 1975, flew a red flag with a white three-headed elephant, Erawan, standing on a pedestal beneath a white parasol. It goes back to Lan Xang, the kingdom founded by Fa Ngum in 1353, whose full name means the Kingdom of a Million Elephants and the White Parasol. There is no emoji of that flag, so 🐘☂️ is how people write it, and 🐘 remains the animal most tied to Laos; the Elephant Festival in Sayaboury province celebrates it every year.

Buddhist symbols, wats and the naga 🛕🙏🐍

Most Lao people are Theravada Buddhists, and village life runs around the wat, the temple monastery. 🛕 is the emoji people use for a wat, ☸️ for the dharma, 🙏 for the nop, the greeting with joined palms, 📿 for prayer beads, 🪷 for the lotus offered at the altar and 🕯️ for the candles of the full-moon days. In Luang Prabang, monks in saffron robes walk the streets at dawn for tak bat, the morning alms round, and kneeling people place a little sticky rice in each bowl: 🍚🙏 is how it is usually written.

The national monument is Pha That Luang in Vientiane, the great golden stupa that has also stood on the national emblem since 1991. There is no stupa emoji; 🛕 or 🛕✨ is the usual stand-in. Its festival, Boun That Luang, fills the grounds with pilgrims and candles 🕯️ at the full moon of November.

The naga, the great serpent spirit of the Mekong, is everywhere in Laos: its scaly bodies form the balustrades of temple stairs and its heads rise from the prows of racing boats. 🐍 and 🐉 are what people send for it. Every year around the end of Buddhist Lent, crowds gather on the Mekong banks to watch for the naga fireballs, glowing balls said to rise out of the river.

Lao festivals and the emoji people send for them

Pi Mai Lao, the Lao New Year, falls in mid-April, usually 14 to 16 April, in the hottest weeks of the year. Buddha images are washed with scented water, elders' hands are gently sprinkled for a blessing, and then the streets turn into a friendly water fight: 💦🔫🎉 says it all. The wish is Sabaidee Pi Mai (ສະບາຍດີປີໃໝ່), Happy New Year. Luang Prabang's celebration, with its sand stupas on the riverbank and processions, is the best known.

Boun Bang Fai, the rocket festival, comes in May before the rains: villages build huge bamboo rockets 🚀 and launch them to remind the sky to send rain for the rice. At the end of Buddhist Lent in October, Boun Ok Phansa brings small boats of banana leaf with candles and flowers floated on the river, and in Luang Prabang a procession of illuminated boats, lai heua fai 🏮🛶. The next day Vientiane holds Boun Suang Heua, the boat racing festival, when long teams of rowers 🚣 race on the Mekong.

A baci (sou khuan) is the ceremony for every big moment, a wedding, a birth, a homecoming, a departure or Pi Mai: guests tie white cotton strings 🧵 around one another's wrists while wishing them well, to call the person's spirits back to the body. 2 December is National Day 🇱🇦🎉, and the Hmong New Year at the end of the harvest is celebrated with new clothes and the ball-tossing game pov pob.

Lao food emoji: sticky rice 🍚, laap and Beerlao 🍺

Sticky rice, khao niao (ເຂົ້າໜຽວ), is the heart of every Lao meal. It is steamed and served in a tip khao, a small woven bamboo basket 🧺, and eaten with the hands, rolled into a ball and dipped into the other dishes. 🍚🧺 is the most Lao pair of emoji there is, and Lao people sometimes call themselves luk khao niao, children of sticky rice.

Laap (ລາບ), a salad of minced meat or fish with lime, chilli, toasted rice powder and lots of fresh herbs, is often called the national dish: 🥩🌿🍋‍🟩🌶️. Tam mak hoong (ຕຳໝາກຫຸ່ງ), green papaya pounded in a mortar with chilli, lime and fermented fish sauce (padaek), has no papaya emoji and is written 🥗🌶️. Ping kai, grilled chicken 🍗, mok pa, fish steamed in banana leaf 🐟🍃, and the noodle soups khao piak sen and foe 🍜🥢 complete the table, and khao jee 🥖, the baguette sandwich, is a legacy of French colonial times.

To drink, Beerlao 🍺 is the national beer and a source of pride, lao-lao 🍶 is the rice spirit poured at every baci, and Lao coffee ☕ comes from the Bolaven Plateau in the south, where French planters first brought it. Mango 🥭 season arrives with the April heat.

The Mekong, the mountains and travel in Laos

Laos is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, and the Mekong 🌊, Mae Nam Khong (ແມ່ນ້ຳຂອງ), is its lifeline: it runs the length of the country and forms much of the border with Thailand. 🌅 is the sunset over the river from the Vientiane riverside. In the far south it spreads into Si Phan Don, the Four Thousand Islands 🏝️, where boats once took visitors to see Irrawaddy dolphins 🐬 in a deep pool on the Cambodian border (the last of them there were reported gone in 2022), and the Khone Phapheng falls are among the largest in Southeast Asia by volume.

Most of the country is mountains and forest ⛰️🏞️, with rice paddies 🌾 and water buffalo 🐃 in the valleys. 💧 is the turquoise cascades of Kuang Si near Luang Prabang, 🎈 the hot-air balloons over the limestone karsts of Vang Vieng, and 🏺 the Plain of Jars in Xieng Khouang, a field of thousands of ancient stone jars whose purpose is still debated, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2019, like the old royal town of Luang Prabang and the Khmer temple of Wat Phou.

In town you ride a tuk-tuk 🛺, and since December 2021 the Laos–China Railway 🚄 links Vientiane, Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang to the Chinese border. ⚽ is the most popular sport, Muay Lao, Lao kickboxing, is 🥊, and 🪈 is the nearest emoji to the khene, the bamboo mouth organ that is the sound of Lao music and of lam, the sung poetry that goes with it.

Lao letters and the kip ₭: how to type them

Lao is written in its own script, a close cousin of the Thai script, with 27 consonants from ກ to ຮ. Children learn them with a word each, as in ກ ໄກ່ (kai, chicken 🐔), ຂ ໄຂ່ (khai, egg 🥚), ຄ ຄວາຍ (khuay, water buffalo 🐃) and ຊ ຊ້າງ (xang, elephant 🐘). The consonants fall into high, middle and low classes, and the letter names show it: ສ is so sung, high, and ຊ is so tam, low. ໜ and ໝ are ຫ joined with ນ and ມ, as in ໃໝ່ (mai, new).

Vowels are signs written before, above, below or after the consonant: ເ ແ ໂ ໃ ໄ come first, ິ ີ ຶ ື above, ຸ ູ below, າ ະ after. Together with the consonant class and the tone marks ່ ້ ໊ ໋ they fix which of Lao's tones a syllable takes; the Vientiane dialect is usually described as having five (some analyses count six). Words are written without spaces, a space marks the end of a phrase, ໆ repeats the word before it (ຂອບໃຈຫຼາຍໆ, thank you very much) and ຯ shortens a long name. Lao has its own digits ໐ to ໙, seen on banknotes and official papers, though 0 to 9 are used more in daily life. Two letters, ໞ and ໟ, were added to the Lao block to write Khmu.

To type Lao, add the Lao keyboard: Windows, macOS and Android's Gboard all include one. The kip sign ₭ is U+20AD, HTML ₭; copy it from the grid, as no standard keyboard has it. The kip (LAK) is the only legal currency, though Thai baht and US dollars are often taken in tourist areas, and in daily use you see only banknotes.

Laos has about 8 million people by CLDR's estimate. About 5.5 million speak Lao, and the Isan dialects of northeast Thailand are so close to it that more Lao speakers live in Thailand than in Laos. Next come Khmu, with about 460,000 speakers, Hmong Njua and Hmong Daw, together about 420,000, written in Latin letters whose final consonants mark the tones, and Kuy, about 76,000. Lao, Khmu, Hmong Njua, Hmong Daw and Kuy each have their own collection, as do Laos's neighbours Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and China.