Laos travel guide
Discover the delights of this laid-back country of mountains and rivers. Travellers will be well rewarded with luscious landscapes, friendly people and unique glimpses of a country that's hardly changed for over a century
Sandwiched between Thailand and Vietnam,
Laos offers visitors all the
romantic visions associated with South-East Asia:
saffron-robed monks,
gilded temples and
rusty bicycles.
The draw of Luang Prabang – Laos’s ancient capital – is particularly strong. This charming, tranquil place, with its mix of ancient and French colonial architecture, is regularly voted Wanderlust readers’ favourite city.
Some tourists tag a stopover in Luang Prabang to a general tour of South-East Asia. But it’s well-worth sticking around and exploring the rest of the Laos.
The striking mountainous scenery of Laos’s north is perfect for trekking, rafting and mountain-biking. Here you’ll find the Nam Ha National Protected Area, which is home to elephants, tigers, leopards and nearly 300 species of bird.
For those who prefer more chilled-out holidays, the south is inhabited by coconut palms and easy-going, sarong-clad villagers.
Wanderlust recommends
- Spot wild elephants, tigers and clouded leopards in Nam Ha National Park
- Go kayaking, caving and rock-climbing amid verdant rice paddies and karst rock formations
- Relax at a traditional Lao sauna, where the herb-infused steam is the perfect cure for long day on the road.
- Puzzle over the Plain of Jars: in Laos’s northeast you’ll find fields of giant stone urns – remnants of a lost civilization.
- Eat things on sticks – street stalls serve virtually anything impaled and grilled, however unlikely: frogs, snakes, tripe – even eggs.
- Chill out on one of the ‘Four Thousand Islands’ at Si Phan Don – a landlocked archipelago in the middle of the Mekong, in the south of Laos.
Wanderlust tips
Wat Phu Champsak in southern Laos is the most the evocative Khmer ruin outside of Cambodia and is mercifully free of the crowds that can dog Angkor Wat.
The best way to experience these litchen-blushed pavilions and the rural communities that surround them is by bicycle.