Laos for the first time: what actually surprises people
Most people arriving in Laos for the first time have already travelled in Southeast Asia, usually Thailand or Vietnam, and their expectations are about seventy percent right. This article is about the other thirty percent, which is where the surprises live.
We run Laos from our own office in Hanoi, which covers Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as one operation, so we see the same conversations repeat.
One: it is genuinely slow, and that is the product
Laos is the slowest country in Southeast Asia to travel and it is the reason to go. Mornings are quiet in a way that Chiang Mai and Hoi An stopped being twenty years ago. The river is still a road. A market at six in the morning is a market, not a performance.
If you want a full programme, a sight before breakfast and another after lunch, we will tell you that Vietnam or Thailand serves you better, and we say that to two or three enquiries a month.
The practical version of this is one empty day per week, deliberately unplanned. Every Laos itinerary we have written that skipped it is the one we later wished we had argued harder about.
Two: the map understates every drive time
This is the single most common planning error and it is not the traveller’s fault. Laos looks compact on a screen and it is drawn with roads that look like roads.
The number to internalise is 25 to 30 miles an hour (40 to 50 km/h) as a working average outside the railway corridor, and less on the mountain sections. Luang Prabang to Nong Khiaw is only about 87 miles (140 km) and it takes three and a half to four hours.
We publish real drive times in every itinerary rather than optimistic ones. Where a leg runs over five hours we break it with an overnight or replace it with a flight, and an itinerary with three consecutive long drives is badly built regardless of who wrote it. The argument about lengths is in how many days do you need in Laos.
Three: the railway is excellent and it has not changed the country
The Laos-China Railway opened in December 2021 and it turned Vientiane to Luang Prabang from a nine to eleven hour mountain road into a journey of around two hours. It is comfortable, it is cheap, and the route through tunnels and viaducts is worth seeing.
First-timers then assume Laos has a rail network. It does not. It has one line, running from Vientiane north through Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang and Oudomxay to the Chinese border. There is no rail east to the Plain of Jars, none south to Pakse and none to Nong Khiaw.
Two more practicalities. Seats sell out: booking windows are short by international standards and popular services fill within hours in high season, which is why we book on the day the window opens. And the stations are not in the towns. Luang Prabang’s station is roughly 7 miles (11 km) from the heritage peninsula, so every rail leg is a transfer, a train and another transfer.
Four: the alms round is a religious practice, not an attraction
At dawn in Luang Prabang, monks walk the streets collecting food. It is a living practice, it happens every morning whether or not anyone is watching, and visitor behaviour has damaged it.
What that means in practice: watch from across the street, stay seated or kneeling if you are close, no flash, no cameras in faces, and do not buy sticky rice from a street vendor in order to join in unless you have been properly prepared for what you are doing. The sticky rice sold to visitors at the roadside is frequently poor quality and monks have been made ill by it.
Our guides brief you the night before rather than at half past five in the morning, and about a third of our clients decide afterwards that they would rather watch from a distance with a coffee than participate. That is a perfectly good outcome.
Five: unexploded ordnance, said plainly
Between 1964 and 1973, Laos was bombed more heavily per head of population than any country in history. More than two million tons of ordnance were dropped and a significant proportion failed to detonate. It is still in the ground.
This is not a reason to avoid Laos and it is not a reason for anxiety on a normal itinerary. Towns, temples, tourist sites and roads are cleared and safe.
In Xieng Khouang, Savannakhet, Salavan, Sekong, Attapeu, Khammouane and Houaphanh, the rule for visitors is absolute and simple: stay on marked paths and on cleared ground, and do not walk into fields, forest edges or old craters because they look interesting. At the Plain of Jars you will see concrete markers set by clearance teams. The white side is cleared and the red side is not. Walk on the white side. Your guide will tell you the same thing and we would rather you had read it here first.
Two places explain the story better than any article: the COPE Visitor Centre in Vientiane, which makes prosthetic limbs and tells the history without sentimentality, and the UXO Laos Information Centre in Luang Prabang. Both are free, both take about an hour, and we put them in almost every itinerary.
Six: it runs on cash
Laos runs on cash outside the main hotels. Cash machines are reliable in Luang Prabang, Vientiane and Pakse, and unreliable elsewhere. Withdrawal limits are low and fees are per transaction, so take more per withdrawal. Change money in the cities before you go north or south. Power cuts are normal on the river islands and in the far north, so bring a battery pack.
Seven: the accommodation is excellent in one town and simple everywhere else
Luang Prabang has some of the best small hotels in Southeast Asia, converted French colonial houses and modern properties of ten to twenty rooms, and they are better value than anything comparable in Thailand or Vietnam. Vientiane is fine. Everywhere else is simple: fan rooms, intermittent hot water, occasional power cuts.
We say which nights are which in the proposal rather than describing a basic river bungalow as rustic charm. The position at Nong Khiaw is worth a cold shower, and you should still know before you go.
Eight: the food is not Thai food
Sticky rice is the staple and it is eaten with the right hand, rolled into a ball. Laap, minced meat or fish with herbs, lime and toasted rice powder, is the national dish and it is better here than the Thai version. Tam mak hoong, the green papaya salad, is hotter than its Thai cousin and often contains fermented fish. Or lam is the Luang Prabang stew, thickened with sakhaan pepperwood that leaves the mouth tingling.
Two things to order that belong specifically to Luang Prabang: khao soi, which here is a rice noodle soup with a fermented soybean and pork sauce and is nothing like the Thai dish of the same name, and kaipen, the crisp Mekong riverweed eaten with jaew bong. Beerlao is genuinely good.
The food is spicier than Thai food more consistently and it is easily adjusted if you ask. Vegetarian is workable but must be arranged in advance, because fish sauce and fermented fish are in most things by default.
Nine: temple dress is enforced
Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off, and it is applied more consistently here than in Thailand. A scarf in the day bag solves it.
Ten: what we would do differently on a first visit
Having built a great many of these, the pattern of what works is clear.
Four nights in Luang Prabang, not two. Two nights is enough to see the town and not enough to be in it. The case is in Luang Prabang, slowly.
Choose north or south, not both. The country is long enough that attempting both spends two days in transit and dilutes everything.
Put the river in. A private long-tail for a sunset costs $60 to $150 for the boat rather than per person, and it is the best small purchase in the country.
Skip the second temple town. After Luang Prabang, more temples add less than a morning in a village or two hours on the water.
Do not add Vang Vieng by default. The karst landscape is superb and the town is not to everyone’s taste. It works well with children and it is easy to skip if that is not you.
Go in November if you can. The clarity of the dry season without the peak rates of late December. The full calendar, including the burning haze in March and April that most planning articles omit, is in Laos month by month.
Plan this trip
Tell us what you want the trip to feel like and a Laos specialist will build the first outline around it, with honest drive times and the nights that are simple marked as simple. Free, no obligation.
Keep reading
- Laos: the complete guide to planning your trip
- Luang Prabang, slowly: three days and a fourth
- Laos month by month
- How many days do you need in Laos?
- Laos food and culture in 11 days
- All our Laos trips
Frequently asked questions
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