How many days do you need in Laos?

Almost every disappointing Laos trip we have been asked to fix afterwards had the same cause, and it was not the hotels or the weather. It was too many places.

So here is what each length actually buys.

Five days: Luang Prabang, and nothing else

If you have five days, spend them all in one town, and make it Luang Prabang.

That is not a compromise. Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage town on a peninsula between the Mekong and the Nam Khan, and four full days there is a genuinely good short holiday: Wat Xieng Thong, the Royal Palace Museum, the morning market at six, the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre, which explains the country’s ethnic diversity better than anything else in Laos, the alms round watched properly rather than photographed badly, Kuang Si about 20 miles (32 km) out of town at opening or after three, a weaving village across the river, and a sunset on a boat.

What five days does not buy is a second region. A five-day trip that adds Vang Vieng loses a day to the road and the station transfers, and gains a busy town you did not need. We would say so before you booked.

Seven days: Luang Prabang plus one

Seven days is the first length where a second place is defensible, and the honest choices are:

Luang Prabang and Nong Khiaw. Our preference. About 87 miles (140 km) north, three and a half to four hours by road, and a completely different country when you arrive: a river village under limestone cliffs, short steep viewpoint climbs, and simple accommodation with a balcony over the water. Three nights in Luang Prabang, three in Nong Khiaw, one absorbed by transfers.

Luang Prabang and Vientiane. Easier, because the railway does it in about two hours. Vientiane is a small, low-slung capital that people either enjoy or find dull, and both reactions are fair. One night, two at the outside. The reason to include it is COPE, which we come to below.

Luang Prabang and the slow boat. If you are arriving overland from northern Thailand, the two-day Mekong boat from Huay Xai with an overnight at Pakbeng eats most of a week on its own and is worth doing on its own terms.

Seven days does not reach the south. Pakse is a flight or a very long drive from anywhere in the north, and the Bolaven and Si Phan Don need four days between them to be worth the journey.

Ten days: the working minimum for a real Laos trip

Ten days is where we start recommending Laos as a stand-alone destination rather than as a component. It comfortably covers Luang Prabang, the river, one northern region and Vientiane, with one genuinely empty day built in.

The shape we build most often is four nights in Luang Prabang, three in the north at Nong Khiaw, the train south, one night in Vientiane and out. That is classic Laos in 10 days, and its defining feature is that it has only three hotel changes.

What ten days does not do is north and south together. It is one or the other. Fitting both means two internal flights, two more hotel changes and roughly two days of your ten spent in transit, and the trip stops feeling like Laos and starts feeling like an itinerary.

Fourteen days: add a region, not two

Fourteen days is the comfortable number, and the discipline is the same: it adds one region.

Fourteen days going north. Luang Prabang, Nong Khiaw, Muang Ngoi by boat, the Plain of Jars at Phonsavan, Vang Vieng if you want it, Vientiane. This is the version for people who came for mountains.

Fourteen days going south. Luang Prabang, Vientiane, fly to Pakse, Champasak and Wat Phou, the Bolaven Plateau for the coffee and the waterfalls, Si Phan Don at the Cambodian border where the point of the place is that nothing happens. This is the version for people who came to slow down further, which in Laos is saying something.

We set out the full argument for one of these, with the alternatives named, in the best two-week route through Laos.

Fourteen days across two countries. Also a good use of the time. Laos and northern Thailand with the slow boat is the classic. Laos and Vietnam is our most requested combination and both halves are run by the same office of ours in Hanoi.

Twenty-one days: two countries, or all of Laos

Three weeks is enough for the whole country at a sane pace, north and south, with the Plain of Jars and the deep south both included and nothing rushed. In practice most people with three weeks would rather use them across two or three countries, and we agree with that instinct. Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia in 21 days is one plan run by one office rather than three suppliers handing you along.

What twenty-one days does not mean is five countries. Fourteen days across three countries is already too thin, and we will say so.

What the railway changed, in days

The Laos-China Railway opened in December 2021 and it is the single biggest change to travel here in a generation. Vientiane to Luang Prabang used to be a mountain road of nine to eleven hours or a domestic flight. It is now around two hours.

On a ten-day trip that is worth two days, and it is the reason ten days now buys what twelve used to.

Three caveats, because the excitement usually outruns the practicalities. Seats are limited and popular services fill within hours in high season, so we book on the day the window opens. The stations are not in the towns, so every leg needs a transfer at each end. And the line has changed nothing off its own corridor: there is no rail east to the Plain of Jars, none south to Pakse, none across the north to Nong Khiaw. Everywhere else is still road, and the road is still slow.

The rule we apply to every Laos itinerary

One empty day per week, deliberately unplanned.

Every Laos trip we have written that skipped this is the one we later wished we had argued harder about. This is a country whose pleasures are the ones you were not scheduled for: the market at six, the second cup of coffee, the boat that leaves when it leaves. If the itinerary is full, none of that can happen, and you have bought an expensive transfer schedule with temples attached.

The related rule is that no more than one leg over five hours belongs in a ten-day trip, and where a leg is longer than that we either break it with an overnight or replace it with a flight.

Two hours we would not cut at any length

The COPE Visitor Centre in Vientiane and the UXO Laos Information Centre in Luang Prabang. 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 of it is still in the ground. Both centres are free, both take about an hour, and they explain the country you are walking through.

That history also carries one practical rule, which applies in Xieng Khouang, Savannakhet, Salavan, Sekong, Attapeu, Khammouane and Houaphanh: stay on marked paths and cleared ground, and do not walk into fields, forest edges or old craters because they look interesting. At the Plain of Jars the clearance markers are concrete, white on the cleared side and red on the uncleared side. Walk on the white side.

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Keep reading

• Laos: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The best two-week route through Laos
• What does a trip to Laos really cost?
• What we would skip in Laos
• Classic Laos in 10 days
• All our Laos trips

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