Luang Prabang, slowly: three days and the fourth we argue for

So this is three days written at the town’s own pace, followed by the argument for the fourth.

Understanding the shape of the place

Luang Prabang was the royal capital, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the protection is the reason it still looks the way it does. Two-storey buildings, French colonial shophouses beside Lao wooden houses, more than thirty working monasteries inside a very small area, and the two rivers meeting at the tip of the peninsula.

The consequence for a visitor is that everything is walkable and almost nothing is urgent. It is also why the good hotels are small and why December and January sell out four to six months ahead.

The daily rhythm matters more here than the sight list. The town is awake at five thirty and asleep by ten. The heat arrives at eleven and leaves at four. Anything you want to do outdoors happens in the two ends of the day, and the middle belongs to a fan, a book and a river view. Work with that rather than against it and the town is a pleasure. Fight it and you will be walking to a temple at one in the afternoon in April at 96F (36C).

Day one: the peninsula on foot

Five thirty, the alms round, tak bat. Monks from the monasteries walk the streets at dawn collecting food from residents kneeling at the roadside. It is a living religious practice, it happens whether or not anybody is watching, and visitor behaviour has damaged it.

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, because the rice sold to visitors at the roadside is frequently poor and monks have been made ill by it. Our guides brief you the night before rather than at half past five. About a third of our clients decide afterwards that they would rather watch from a distance with a coffee, and that is a good outcome, not a lesser one.

Six thirty, the morning market. Not the night market and not the handicraft market. The fresh market on the peninsula, where the town buys food: river fish, buffalo, forest greens nobody has a name for in English, sticky rice steamers, and stalls doing khao soi, which in Laos is a rice noodle soup with a fermented soybean and pork sauce and nothing like the Thai dish. This is the best eating hour in the country and it costs two dollars.

Eight thirty, breakfast properly, then Wat Xieng Thong. The finest building in Laos, from 1560, with the tree of life mosaic on the rear wall and a roof that sweeps almost to the ground. Go early and it is empty.

Ten, the Royal Palace Museum. The last royal residence, small, and worth an hour for the throne hall and the Prabang Buddha for which the town is named. Dress rules are enforced.

Middle of the day. Nothing. A pool, or a cafe on the Nam Khan side, or the second half of the book.

Four, the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre. Small, privately run, and it explains the ethnic diversity of Laos better than anything else in the country. Forty-nine officially recognised groups, and the textiles and the shaman’s equipment do more work than any wall text. An hour.

Sunset. Mount Phousi is the classic and it is crowded, a 300-step climb into a queue. The alternative we prefer is a boat: a private long-tail for an hour on the Mekong, $60 to $150 for the boat rather than per person, with the sun going down behind the far bank and nobody else on the water.

Evening. The night market along Sisavangvong Road, which is genuinely good for textiles and genuinely full of the same factory-printed things at the far end. The food lane is cheap and it is fine. Eat properly instead at one of the small restaurants on the Nam Khan side.

Day two: across the river and out of town

Morning, the far bank. A two-minute boat across the Nam Khan or the Mekong takes you to Ban Xieng Maen and a string of villages where the pace drops again. There are temples in ruins, a track along the bank, and almost nobody. Two or three hours on foot, best before ten.

Alternatively, the weaving villages: Ban Xang Khong for silk and saa paper, where the looms are working and the demonstration is not staged for a coach.

Afternoon, Kuang Si. About 20 miles (32 km) from town, roughly forty minutes each way. A series of turquoise limestone pools stepping down through forest below a tall fall, with swimming levels and wooden walkways.

The timing rule is absolute: go at opening, or go after three. Between eleven and two it is full. In the wet season the pools are brown and powerful rather than turquoise and gentle, which is a different thing and still worth seeing.

At the entrance, the bear rescue centre houses Asiatic black bears taken from the bile trade. Twenty minutes, and it is worth them.

Evening. Or lam at a Lao restaurant: the local stew, thickened with sakhaan pepperwood that leaves the mouth tingling. What else to order is in what to eat in Laos.

Day three: the day with nothing in it

This is the day we have to defend in about half of our proposals, and it is the day people write to us about afterwards.

Options, none of which is a programme:

A cooking class that starts at the morning market and ends with you making laap and rolling sticky rice by hand. Two to three hours, and the best food education in the country.

Pak Ou caves, an hour upriver by boat, two limestone caverns filled with several thousand Buddha images left by pilgrims over centuries. The caves themselves are modest. The boat journey is the reason to go, and if you take the slow public boat rather than a speedboat, the whole thing is a half day on the river.

An almsgiving or textile workshop, or a session with a weaver. Half a day, hands busy.

Or nothing at all. A pool in the morning, the market for lunch, a massage, a book on a balcony over the Nam Khan, and the sunset boat.

The fourth day, and why we argue for it

Two nights lets you see Luang Prabang. Four nights lets you be in it.

The specific things a fourth day buys: a second dawn, which is when most people finally understand the alms round rather than photographing it. A morning with no plan, which is the only way the town’s rhythm reaches you. The ability to go back to something. And a buffer, because the transfer in or out of Luang Prabang is frequently a train with a 7 mile (11 km) station transfer at each end or a flight that moves.

There is also an arithmetic argument. Adding a fourth night in Luang Prabang costs one hotel night. Adding a fourth place to a ten-day Laos trip costs a transfer day, a hotel change and roughly a hundred and fifty dollars of transport, and buys less. That trade is the whole thesis of what we would skip in Laos.

Where to stay

Three bands, and the difference between them is real.

Guesthouses, $25 to $45. Clean, simple, often family run, frequently on the quiet side streets, and better than the price suggests.

Good three star, $70 to $120. A proper room, breakfast, walking distance to the peninsula.

Heritage boutique, $180 to $320, and luxury above $450. Converted colonial houses and small design properties of ten to twenty rooms. These are among the best small hotels in Southeast Asia and better value than anything comparable in Thailand or Vietnam, which is why we build boutique Laos around them.

Position matters more than category. On the peninsula you walk everywhere and hear the drums at dawn. Across the Nam Khan or out towards the airport you get more space, a bigger pool and a five-minute drive to everything, which with children is often the better trade.

Plan this trip

Tell us your dates and we will hold the right small hotel before it goes, and build the rest of Laos around the number of nights this town actually deserves. Free first outline, no obligation.

Start planning →

Keep reading

• Laos: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Classic Laos in 10 days
• Boutique Laos in 10 days
• What to eat in Laos, and where
• Laos for the first time
• All our Laos trips

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