It is listed as Asian! BTW many Lao and Isan (NE Thailand) dishes are the same and so is the culture and language intertwinned as at one time they were part of the same country. The history of the Lao is the history of Laos and the history of Isan. These histories diverged in the 19th century, when the defeat of Vientiane Capitals in Asia. Since then, both Thailand and Laos have carried out sustained campaigns to transform themselves into nation states centred on the Thai and Lao people respectively. In Isan this has meant the strengthening of the people's loyalties to Thailand, a process known as " Thaification". Many younger people in particular therefore prefer to consider themselves Isan rather than Lao: "Isan", literally meaning "northeast" implies belonging to Thailand, while "Lao" connotes instead a loyalty to Laos. In Laos, by contrast, the same process has resulted in the promotion of the Lao language and culture as the national language and culture.