Laos Life

Vientiane Slowly: The Quiet Capital on the Mekong Most capitals announce themselves. Vientiane does the opposite. You arrive expecting traffic, towers and urgency, and instead you find a low, leafy city spread along a wide bend of the Mekong, where the tallest landmark is a golden stupa, the evening plan is a walk along the river, and nobody seems in any hurry to impress you. That is exactly why it works — if you give it time. Too many travellers treat Vientiane as a transit box to tick: one night between a flight and the train north to Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang, a quick photo at Patuxai, then gone. Stay two or three nights, or base yourself here for a week as a long-stayer, and a different city appears — morning markets full of herbs you have never seen, French-era shophouses turned into bakeries, monks crossing quiet streets at dawn, and sunsets over Thailand on the far bank that turn the whole riverfront gold. This is a guide to doing Vientiane slowly, honestly, and well. Firs...

Vang Vieng Reborn: Karsts, Lagoons and the Slow River Town Laos Grew Into There is a moment, just after dawn in Vang Vieng, when the mist is still sitting in the Nam Song valley and the limestone peaks appear one by one, grey, then green, then gold at the edges. Hot-air balloons drift over the river. A longtail boat putters somewhere below. Farmers are already in the fields on the far bank, and the town behind you is only just waking up. It is, quite simply, one of the great small-town landscapes in Southeast Asia — and for years, remarkably, a lot of visitors barely looked at it. Vang Vieng, in Vientiane Province about 130 kilometres north of the capital, built its first fame on the river rather than the view. That fame went wrong, and then the town changed. Today it is an outdoor town again: tubing and kayaking a calmer river, spring-fed lagoons, caves, viewpoints, cycling between karsts, and a railway that arrives in an hour instead of half a day. This guide is for visitors who wa...

Southern Laos Slowly: Pakse, the Bolaven Plateau and Si Phan Don Most first trips to Laos run north: Vientiane, Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang along the new railway. The south rewards a different kind of journey. Down in Champasak Province the Mekong widens, slows and splits around hundreds of islands, coffee grows on cool volcanic highlands, waterfalls drop off a plateau edge in white sheets, and a Khmer temple older than Angkor climbs a sacred mountain. Southern Laos is not a place to rush between sights. It is a place to base yourself well, travel in loops, and let the river set the pace. This guide covers the three bases that make the south work — Pakse as the hub, the Bolaven Plateau as the highland escape, and Si Phan Don, the Four Thousand Islands, as the river ending — plus Champasak town and Wat Phou in between. It is written for expats, long-stayers and first-time visitors who have time for a week or more, and for Thailand-based travellers who can enter the south surprisingly...

Lao Food Is Its Own Thing: A Thailand Traveller's Guide to Eating in Laos Here is the mistake Thailand-based travellers make most often in Laos: sitting down to a first Lao meal expecting Thai food by another name. The dishes can look like cousins — and in Thailand's own northeast, Isan, many of them literally are family — but Lao food has its own centre of gravity, its own staple, its own beloved bitterness and its own rules about what belongs on the table together. Learn those, and eating in Laos stops being a comparison and becomes a discovery. This guide is the introduction we wish someone had given us on our first trip across the Mekong. A declaration of interest, happily made: in our house, Lao food is a serious subject. Jay cooks and documents the food of northern Laos at length on our companion site, Food From Northern Laos , and our home in Surin, in Isan, sits inside the wider Lao food world — same sticky rice culture, many shared dishes, a language closely related ...

Northern Laos: The Mountains, the Mekong and the Roads Less Travelled Northern Laos is where the country gets wilder, cooler and quieter all at once. North of Luang Prabang, the lowland river towns give way to layered mountains, tea and rice country, Tai and Akha and Hmong and many other peoples' villages, and roads that climb and curl through some of the most beautiful, least hurried landscape in Southeast Asia. It is not a region to rush. Distances that look modest on a map become full, vivid days on mountain roads, and that is exactly the point: the north rewards travellers who treat the journey as the experience. This guide introduces the main northern bases and routes in general terms — Luang Namtha, Oudomxay and Phongsaly, the Mekong river route, and a mention of Xieng Khouang and its famous Plain of Jars — along with honest advice on trekking and village visits. Plan with current local information before you go, because road conditions, transport and access arrangements ch...

Luang Prabang Beyond the Postcards: Morning Markets, Mekong Evenings and Slow Days The postcards are true, as far as they go. Luang Prabang really does sit in a curve of green hills where the Nam Khan river slides into the Mekong. The temples really are beautiful, the old streets really do glow at the end of the day, and the line of monks at dawn really is one of the most moving sights in Southeast Asia. What the postcards cannot show you is what this UNESCO World Heritage town feels like in week two, when you have a favourite coffee place, the market women recognise you, and your best hour of the day has become a walk you take for no reason at all. This is a guide to that Luang Prabang: the town lived slowly. If you are coming for two nights, much of it will still help. But it is written for the traveller who can give the place a week, two weeks, a month — and for anyone deciding whether Luang Prabang might be a place to return to, winter in, write in or simply breathe in for a whil...

Living in Laos as an Expat: Costs, Visas and the Quiet Life People who move to Laos rarely do it for the buzz. They do it for the opposite: space, quiet, a slower morning, a town that still goes to sleep at a reasonable hour, and a feeling that life does not need to be performed at full volume. After years based in Thailand, we understand the appeal completely. Thailand is lively, convenient and full of energy. Laos, its landlocked neighbour along the Mekong, offers a different bargain — less infrastructure, fewer choices, and in return a calm that many long-stayers say they cannot find anywhere else in the region anymore. This is an honest guide to that bargain. Living in Laos as an expat can be deeply rewarding if you want simplicity and you are self-reliant. It can be frustrating if you need everything to work quickly, want a large international social scene on your doorstep, or expect the healthcare, shopping and services depth of Bangkok, Chiang Mai or even Phuket. Both of those...

Laos for First-Timers: Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng at a Slow Pace Laos rewards a different kind of trip. If you arrive expecting to move fast, tick off sights in a single afternoon and be somewhere new every night, you will probably leave wondering what all the fuss was about. If you arrive willing to slow down, sit a little longer over coffee, walk the same street at different times of day and let a place settle around you, Laos starts to make sense. That is not travel writing fluff. It is practical advice, because the best of this country is quiet: a river at dusk, a morning market setting up before the heat, monks walking in line at dawn, mist sitting on limestone hills while a town wakes up. This guide is for a first trip built around three bases that most visitors can combine comfortably: Vientiane, the capital on the Mekong; Luang Prabang, the UNESCO World Heritage town in the north where the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers meet; and Vang Vieng, the small karst-and-river...