Boutique Laos in 10 days: four properties worth the rate
Laos has a small hotel problem, and the honest version of it is this: there are perhaps a dozen properties in the whole country that a well-travelled person would call excellent, and most of them are in one town. Above that dozen there is very little, and paying more does not reliably get you more.
- Duration
- 10 days
- Pace
- Slow
- Hotel changes
- 3
- Best months
- Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb
- From
- $2,650 per person
That makes a boutique Laos trip a shorter list than it would be in Thailand or Vietnam, and it also makes it easier to get right. This route uses four properties that we would stay in ourselves, in the places where the setting justifies the night, and it moves between them slowly.
Ten days, three hotel changes, private boats on both rivers, and one rail leg.
Who it suits: travellers who care about where they sleep, couples, and anyone who has done the region on a mid-range budget and wants to do this one properly. It is not a luxury trip in the Bangkok or Kyoto sense and we would rather be clear about that.
Your specialist: Osnat Angerman or Paz Prosianoy, with our Hanoi office on the ground.
Day by day
Luang Prabang, days 1 to 4
Day 1: Arrive Luang Prabang. Fifteen minutes from the airport. Four nights in a heritage property in the protected zone: a converted colonial residence or a restored merchant house, in every case fewer than thirty rooms, with a courtyard and a pool. We name the specific hotel in your proposal along with the two alternatives and what each one gives up.
Nothing scheduled. Dinner booked within walking distance.
Day 2: The town, guided once and then not. The alms round at dawn if you want it, briefed the night before and watched from a respectful distance. Then a private guided morning: Wat Xieng Thong, the Royal Palace Museum, and the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre. Ninety minutes of context and then the guide leaves, which is the correct amount of guiding in Luang Prabang.
Afternoon free. At five, your own long-tail boat on the Mekong for the light, out past the confluence and back in the dark.
Day 3: Kuang Si, before it opens properly. Out early to the waterfall, an hour in the pools while it is still empty, the bear rescue centre, and a lunch at a river restaurant on the road back. Afternoon free: the spa, the pool, or the monasteries in the empty middle of the day.
Day 4: Luang Prabang, unscheduled. Nothing at all. Options in the document: a private cooking session in a house rather than a school, a natural dyeing morning at a weaving studio, a bicycle loop, a second museum visit. Most people do one thing and read for the rest.
The river, days 5 and 6
Day 5: Upriver. A private boat north on the Mekong in the morning, stopping at the Pak Ou caves where several thousand Buddha images have accumulated in two chambers above the water, and then on to a lodge above the river outside town.
Two nights in the second property: a dozen or so pavilions on a bluff, no road noise, no town, and a restaurant that cooks what the kitchen garden produces. This is the quietest place on the trip.
Day 6: The river, at rest. Nothing scheduled. A walk to a Khmu village with the lodge’s own guide, kayaks, a hammock, or the pool. Dinner on the terrace as the light goes.
South, days 7 to 10
Day 7: To Vang Vieng by rail. Back into town, out to the station roughly 7 miles (11 km) away, and about an hour south on the train. Vang Vieng station sits outside the town and the transfer is included.
Two nights in the third property, a small hotel on the river with the karst directly in front of it. The town has changed a great deal and the landscape has not. Afternoon on the water.
Day 8: Vang Vieng. An optional hot air balloon at dawn, wind permitting, which is an hour and is the best view in central Laos. Then a lagoon and a cave before the heat, and the afternoon free. A private long-tail down the Nam Song at five, which almost nobody does and which is better than the tubing version of the same river.
Day 9: Vientiane. An hour by train. One night in the fourth property, a restored French-era building near the river with about twenty rooms.
The capital in an afternoon, which is the correct dose: Pha That Luang, Wat Si Saket, and COPE, the centre that makes prosthetic limbs for people injured by unexploded ordnance and which we include almost everywhere. Sunset on the promenade and a good dinner, because Vientiane eats better than its reputation.
Day 10: Departure. Transfer to the airport.
What is included
Nine nights in four properties chosen for the room and the setting, breakfast throughout, both rail legs in reserved seats with station transfers, private air-conditioned car with English-speaking driver on every transfer and site day, private guides on three mornings only, the private Mekong boat to Pak Ou, the Mekong sunset boat with drinks, the private Nam Song boat, Kuang Si and bear centre entries, two dinner reservations made on your behalf, a day-by-day document with real drive times and train numbers, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Hanoi office throughout.
The balloon is quoted separately because it depends on the day and on you.
What we would change, and when
- Want the best rooms in Luang Prabang? They are pool suites in two properties, there are not many of them, and for December and January they are gone five to six months ahead. We hold them as soon as your dates are fixed.
- Prefer the mountains to Vang Vieng? Swap days 7 and 8 for two nights at a riverside lodge in Nong Khiaw. The setting is better and the drive is four hours each way rather than an hour by train.
- Want a fifth property? Add two nights on the Bolaven Plateau in the south, flying from Vientiane. There is one small place up there we like and the coffee is the reason to go.
- Travelling in March or April? The northern haze can remove the view from three of the four properties for weeks at a time. On a trip where the view is most of what you are buying, we will tell you plainly before you book.
Honest notes
There is no property in Laos that competes with the best hotels in Bangkok, Siem Reap or Kyoto, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling. What Laos has is a handful of small, characterful, well-run places in settings you cannot buy elsewhere, and a level of quiet that money does not usually purchase. That is a different proposition and we think it is a better one here.
Service is warm and it is unhurried. A meal takes as long as it takes. People who need a certain crispness from a hotel sometimes find this frustrating in the first two days and stop noticing by day four.
The river lodge on days 5 and 6 has no shops, no town and limited connectivity. That is why it is on the list.
Built by Osnat Angerman, our Southeast and Central Asia specialist, and checked by our Hanoi office before it goes out.
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