The best two-week route through Laos, and the three alternatives

So a fourteen-day route is a choice between north and south. Below is the one we build most often, argued properly, followed by the three alternatives and who each one suits.

The route we would choose: arrive by river, leave by rail

Fourteen days, entering overland from northern Thailand and exiting from Vientiane. It uses the two best pieces of transport in the country as experiences rather than as transfers, and it has five hotel changes across fourteen days, which is restrained for a country this shape.

Days 1 to 2: Chiang Rai and the border

Fly into Chiang Rai, spend a night, cross to Huay Xai. This is not padding. It gives you a soft landing, it puts the border crossing at the start of a day rather than the end of one, and northern Thailand is worth the twenty-four hours.

Days 3 to 4: the Mekong slow boat

Two days downriver from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, with an overnight at Pakbeng.

The honest description. The public boat is long, low, crowded and fitted with hard benches, it costs $35 to $50 per person, and by hour six of day two most people have had enough. The private and semi-private boats are a completely different proposition, with proper seating, space to move, a guide, lunch that is not a plastic box, and the ability to stop at villages the public boat passes. They cost several hundred dollars for the boat rather than per person, so they work best for four to six people.

Both are worth doing, and what they buy is the country arriving slowly. You watch the banks change from Thai to Lao, you stop at Pakbeng, which exists because the boat stops there, and you arrive in Luang Prabang by water in the late afternoon, which is how the town was reached for a thousand years.

What would make us advise against it: a fear of long days sitting still, a party of one with a tight budget in high season when the public boat is at its fullest, or a green-season date when river levels are unpredictable. In those cases fly into Luang Prabang and start on day three. Two days on hard benches is not a rite of passage.

We build this leg in detail in Laos and northern Thailand in 14 days.

Days 5 to 8: Luang Prabang, four nights

Four nights, not two. The town rewards the second morning and the third: Wat Xieng Thong, the Royal Palace Museum, the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre, the morning market at six, Kuang Si about 20 miles (32 km) out at opening or after three, a weaving village across the river, the alms round watched properly after a briefing the night before, and one day with nothing in it.

Include the UXO Laos Information Centre. It takes an hour, it is free, and it explains the ground you are about to walk on further north.

Days 9 to 11: Nong Khiaw and the north

About 87 miles (140 km) north, three and a half to four hours by road. This is where Laos stops being a heritage town and becomes a mountain country: a river village under limestone cliffs, viewpoint climbs that are short and genuinely steep, caves used as shelters during the bombing, and a short boat up to Muang Ngoi, which has no road.

Accommodation here is simple, and we say so in writing. What you are buying is the position and the silence.

Three nights, of which one is a walking day. Our On foot piece on northern Laos covers the climbs and the village walks in detail, including difficulty and the marked-path rule.

Days 12 to 14: the railway south, Vang Vieng optional, Vientiane

Back to Luang Prabang, then the train. The Laos-China Railway put Vientiane roughly two hours from Luang Prabang, against nine to eleven hours by mountain road, and it is the single change that makes a fourteen-day route this comfortable.

Two ways to spend the last three days.

With Vang Vieng. Break the rail journey there for a night: karst towers, a balloon at dawn, caves, and a lagoon. The town is not to everyone’s taste and it is far busier since the railway cut the journey from Vientiane to about an hour.

Without. Straight to Vientiane, two nights, which gives you an unhurried day: Pha That Luang, Wat Si Saket, COPE, the morning market, and a sunset on the Mekong promenade with the last Beerlao of the trip.

We would take the second version for most first-time travellers, and the first if there are children in the party.

Alternative one: the southern route

Fourteen days weighted the other way, and the better choice if you are travelling in March or April when the northern haze is at its worst.

Luang Prabang for four nights, the train to Vientiane for one, fly to Pakse, then Champasak and Wat Phou, a pre-Angkorian Khmer temple on a hillside that is quiet in a way Angkor has not been for thirty years. Then the Bolaven Plateau for two nights at around 3,300 feet (1,000 m), which is coffee country, noticeably cooler, with waterfalls and Katu and Alak villages. Then Si Phan Don, the four thousand islands, where the Mekong spreads out at the Cambodian border, there is an old French railway bridge, bicycles, and the largest waterfall in Southeast Asia by volume at Khone Phapheng.

Who it suits: second visits, people who want heat rather than mountains, coffee people, and anyone whose priority is doing very little in a beautiful place. The accommodation on the islands is simple: fan rooms, cold water and power cuts.

Alternative two: the history route

For travellers who want the twentieth century as well as the fourteenth.

Luang Prabang, then the Plain of Jars at Phonsavan, reached by air or a long drive and therefore needing two nights. Thousands of megalithic stone jars listed by UNESCO in 2019, inseparable from the bombing that surrounds them, with clearance markers on the ground: white side cleared, red side not, and you walk on the white side. Then on to Vientiane and COPE, and if you have the days, Khammouane in the centre of the country.

Who it suits: people on a second Laos trip, and anyone for whom the war history is a reason to come rather than a footnote.

Alternative three: Laos with a neighbour

Fourteen days across two countries is comfortable. Fourteen days across three is not, and we will say so.

Laos and Vietnam is our most requested pairing and both halves are run by our own office in Hanoi, so it is one plan rather than two suppliers. Laos and northern Thailand is the easiest logistically because of the slow boat. Laos and Cambodia works if you enter the south from Si Phan Don and continue to Angkor, and it is a genuinely good overland day.

What we deliberately left out, and why

Vang Vieng as a two-night stop. The landscape is superb, the town is a matter of taste, and on a fourteen-day route the second night is better spent in Luang Prabang or Nong Khiaw.

Both north and south. The reason is arithmetic. Doing both means two internal flights and about two of your fourteen days in transit, and the pace of the whole trip changes.

Muang Khua and the far northern river route. Dams on the Nam Ou have interrupted the classic multi-day boat trip north of Nong Khiaw, and older guidebooks still describe a journey that no longer works the way they say. Short local legs still run and we use them.

Anything requiring more than one leg over five hours. Where a drive is longer, we break it with an overnight or replace it with a flight. A route with three consecutive long drives is a badly built route no matter how good the places are. The rest of that argument is in what we would skip in Laos.

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Keep reading

• Laos: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Laos and northern Thailand in 14 days
• Walking in northern Laos
• How many days do you need in Laos?
• What we would skip in Laos
• All our Laos trips

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