What we would skip in Laos
This is the article our consultants would rather you read than any of the others, because almost every disappointing Laos trip we have been asked to fix afterwards was not caused by a bad hotel. It was caused by too many places.
Laos is roughly the size of the United Kingdom and it is folded into mountains. The working road average outside the single railway corridor is 25 to 30 miles an hour (40 to 50 km/h). Every place you add to a Laos itinerary costs a transfer day, and a transfer day here is not half a day, it is most of one. So the discipline is subtraction, and here is what we subtract.
Things we would skip most of the time
A second northern town after Nong Khiaw
Once you have had three nights in a river village under limestone cliffs, a second one is the same experience with different food. Muang Ngoi is worth an afternoon by boat from Nong Khiaw and not worth relocating for. Luang Namtha is genuinely different and a full day of driving away, so it belongs on a trip built around the village treks.
The Nam Ou multi-day boat journey to Muang Khua
This one is in older guidebooks and it no longer works as described. Dams on the Nam Ou have interrupted the river route north of Nong Khiaw, so the classic multi-day upstream journey has become a series of road transfers with short boat legs bolted on. Short local boat legs still run and we use them, including Nong Khiaw to Muang Ngoi. The romantic version people have read about does not exist any more, and we would rather say so than sell you a shadow of it.
Mount Phousi at sunset
The 300 steps are fine. The view is fine. The crowd on the top platform in high season is a shoulder-to-shoulder queue with phones held above heads, and you will spend forty minutes in it.
The substitutions are better. A private long-tail on the Mekong for an hour, $60 to $150 for the boat rather than per person, with nobody else on the water. Or Phousi at seven in the morning, when it is empty and the light is better anyway.
The night market food buffet in Luang Prabang
A dollar or two a plate, an enormous quantity of food that has been sitting under lights, and a photograph everybody takes. Go once for the atmosphere if you want it, then eat at the morning market at six or at one of the small restaurants on the Nam Khan side. The food argument is in full in what to eat in Laos.
The tiger and bear photograph attractions, and anything with elephant riding
We do not build these and we will not. On elephants specifically: no riding, on any of our trips, at any property, regardless of what the brochure says about the harness. There are two genuine conservation projects in Laos where the day is observation, feeding and river bathing, and we name the specific one in your proposal.
The “hill tribe visit” as a half-day excursion
A minibus arrives, thirty people walk through a village, textiles are laid out, everyone leaves. Nobody enjoys this, including the village.
What replaces it is a walking day from Muang Ngoi to Ban Na and Ban Huay Bo where you eat lunch in the village, or a night in a homestay on a community trek out of Luang Namtha. The difference is time, and time is the only thing that changes the transaction.
Vientiane as a two-night stop
Vientiane is a small, low-slung capital that people either enjoy or find dull, and both reactions are fair. One night, or two if you land there and want a soft start.
The exception is COPE, the visitor centre that makes prosthetic limbs and tells the story of the bombing without sentimentality. Free, an hour, and it belongs in the itinerary of anyone spending a single night in the city.
Things we would skip on a first trip
The Plain of Jars
We say this reluctantly, because the site is remarkable: thousands of megalithic stone jars around Phonsavan, listed by UNESCO in 2019, inseparable from the bombing history around them.
The problem is access. It is reached by air or a long drive, so it needs two nights, and on a ten-day trip those two nights come out of Luang Prabang or the north. On a fourteen-day trip it works. On a second visit it is one of the best things in the country. On a first ten-day trip it is the classic overreach.
If you do go, the ground rule is not decoration: clearance markers are concrete, the white side is cleared and the red side is not, and you walk on the white side.
The deep south, if you are already going north
Champasak, Wat Phou, the Bolaven Plateau and Si Phan Don are excellent and they are a different trip. Ten days does one region well. Attempting both spends two of the ten in transit, adds two internal flights and dilutes everything, which is the argument in how many days do you need in Laos.
Vang Vieng, unless you want what it does
The karst landscape is superb. The town is a matter of taste, and it is much busier since the railway cut the journey from Vientiane to about an hour.
It is genuinely good with children: a balloon at dawn, caves you float through, a lagoon, kayaking, bicycles through rice fields. It is easy to skip for a couple who came for temples and quiet.
The two-day slow boat, if you are short on patience
Two full days on a long boat with hard benches, and by hour six of day two most people have had enough. It is a wonderful way to arrive in the country if you like long days of watching a river go past, and it is two days of your holiday. The private boats are a different and much better experience at several hundred dollars for the boat. If neither appeals, fly to Luang Prabang and use the two days there. We set out both cases in the best two-week route through Laos.
Times we would skip, not places
March and April in the north. From roughly late February through April, agricultural burning across northern Laos, northern Thailand and Myanmar produces a persistent haze that can sit over Luang Prabang for weeks. In a bad year the mountains are invisible and air quality is genuinely poor. Combined with lowland temperatures above 96F (36C), this is the hardest window in the calendar. If your dates are locked here, we build in the south and we tell you what you are risking.
Pi Mai, if you have not planned for it. Lao New Year in mid-April is three days of water throwing and it is one of the best festivals in Asia to be present for. It is also three days when businesses close and transport runs to no schedule. Plan into it or around it. Do not plan through it by accident.
August and September on unpaved roads. The green season is beautiful and the country is at its most photogenic. It is also when roads in the north and east become difficult or impassable and a landslide on Route 13 is a normal event. Green season works with slack in the schedule and a route on the paved corridors. It does not work with a tight itinerary and a flight to catch.
The one thing we would never skip
The two hours that explain the country: 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 is still in the ground. Both centres are free, both take about an hour, and they are the difference between a pretty holiday and understanding where you are.
They also carry the one rule that applies on the ground, 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.
What we would add instead
Every subtraction above buys something. Here is where we spend it.
- A fourth night in Luang Prabang. The single best return on a day in this country, and the case is made in Luang Prabang, slowly.
- A private boat. An hour on the Mekong at sunset, or a half day upriver.
- One empty day per week. Deliberately unplanned. Every Laos itinerary we have written that skipped this is the one we later wished we had argued harder about.
- A walking day in the north with a local guide, rather than a viewpoint climb done twice.
- The morning market at six, which costs two dollars and beats most paid experiences in the country.
Plan this trip
Send us the itinerary you have drafted and we will tell you which parts of it we would remove, and why. That advice is free whether or not you book with us.
Keep reading
- Laos: the complete guide to planning your trip
- How many days do you need in Laos?
- The best two-week route through Laos
- Luang Prabang, slowly
- Adventurous Laos in 12 days
- All our Laos trips
Frequently asked questions
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