When we were planning our route, we considered crossing from Cambodia into southern Laos, and working our way north towards the capital (rather than cutting across Thailand and directly entering northern Laos). However, we’d read that these southern border crossings were rife with corruption, we hadn’t quite applied for our e-visas in time, and we were also acutely aware of the considerable travel times through this part of the country. We’ll return one day to explore the south.
Carbon 🚆
At 689 km, our route across Laos was the shortest of any country we’ve visited to date. As a result, our travel in Laos emitted only 57 kgCO2e – the second lowest so far.
Despite covering most of the distance by train and boat, the largest source of emissions was actually the cars that we travelled in. Most cities we visited lacked much public transport, so when the distances were too large to cycle, we had to rely on taxis to get to and from transport hubs or sights outside of the cities.
Cost 💰
Laos is a pretty affordable country, and our daily expenditure wasn’t far off Georgia, which still holds the crown for our lowest daily expenditure to date. I imagine our spend per day would have been the lowest if wasn’t for our splurge on a very comfortable cruise along the Mekong River.
Much like in Cambodia, the cost of our Lao visa seemed disproportionately high compared to other countries. Again, this was due to the short amount of time we spent in the country.
Cats 🐈
Laos arrives bang in the mid-table on our cats per day metric.
But as always, there we some high-quality cats hidden away if you knew where to look…
🏅Most patient Mum
These two ginger kittens were wreaking utter havoc while their Mum sat calmly in the middle and let it happen. Actually, if you look into her eyes, you can see she’s rethinking a couple of her life choices.
Food 🍽
I’m not sure how Lao Sausage didn’t make it into any of our last four blog posts, but it definitely deserves an honourable mention. This sausage is made from fatty pork, lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, shallots, coriander, chillies, garlic, salt, sticky rice and fish sauce. It was so full of flavour that it only took one mouthful before I told Sara it was the best sausage I’d ever eaten.
With Laos behind us, we turned south to continue our south-east Asian adventure back through Thailand and towards Malaysia and Singapore.
Our second destination in Laos was Luang Prabang, a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Town, located in the north of the country at the confluence of the Nam Khan River and the Mekong River.
The train
The super-modern, high-speed Boten–Vientiane railway links the Lao cities of Vientiane and Luang Prabang before heading for the Chinese border, and we were keen to make use of it on our journey through Laos. The owner of our guesthouse in Nong Khai had recommended that we “start working on the train tickets” as soon as we arrived in Vientiane, since acquiring said tickets was “a process”. Having bought a few tickets on this trip so far, I was pretty confident, until I hopped onto the Man In Seat 61‘s site and finally understood what Julian was talking about. It turns out that you can’t buy tickets online, the station is 13 km outside of the city, and the city centre booking office doesn’t accept cash or international credit cards! Reluctantly, we bought our tickets through an agent, with the inevitable commission added on top.
Vientiane station exteriorVientiane station interior
The train line is very impressive and almost brand new, given that passenger services only commenced in December 2021. The railway is a joint project between the Laotian and Chinese governments, and it represents the largest and most expensive infrastructure project in Laos ever. Our trip took only 1 hour 40 minutes to cover 238 km – a journey that otherwise would have taken at least 6 hours by road.
This is the closest the platform attendant would let me get to the front of the train!Ticket inspection
We completed the final hop from Luang Prabang train station to the city centre by a public minibus. This would have been a quick journey, had our fellow passengers not stopped the minibus for a lengthy interrogation of the poor driver regarding where they should disembark. It seems not everyone enjoys a good game of public transit roulette as much we do!
The town
The city centre of Luang Prabang is beautiful, and it exceeded both of our expectations. Almost every building was a tastefully-restored colonial building, with a traditional wooden sign above the front door of the business. For this reason it gave us Hội An vibes, but despite how many hotels and restaurants there were around the town centre, it rarely felt busy.
We were also fascinated by the pair of bamboo bridges that cross the Nam Khan River. We’d heard that each bridge is carefully constructed each year over a one-week period at the start of the dry season, and dismantled again before the wet season arrives and the river levels rise. Confusingly though, both bridges were in the process of being taken apart as we arrived despite it being the middle of the dry season. Clearly, the owners of the bridges knew something that we didn’t…
The waterfall
Just 30 km from Luang Prabang lies Kuang Si falls – a 60 m high cascade of water turned bright blue by the river’s limestone deposits. Following our recent success at the Angkor Wat, we opted for an early Tuk Tuk to the falls in an attempt to beat some of the crowds. We started the visit with a hike to the top of the waterfalls, where we followed a footpath away from the cliff and across a single plank bridge (!) to the source of the falls. Just as we’d hoped, we were the only ones there, and enjoyed a swim in the (very fresh!) water as it ran towards the falls.
On our way back down, we stopped for a swim at a few of the vividly blue travertines. The pools were absolutely stunning, and actually they weren’t nearly as busy as we’d feared – the whole place looked like the Garden of Eden.
But the best part of the waterfalls was possibly the bear sanctuary near the entrance. The sanctuary provides a very comfortable home to wild Asiatic Moon Bears that have been rescued from poachers who had previously kept them in cages for their valuable bile. Any bears that can’t be safely released back into the wild are given a home here or at one of the other sanctuaries run by Free the Bears. The bears seemed to love the wooden constructions in their enclosure – most of them were snoozing with one or two legs draped over the edge, and one was even relaxing in a hammock!
The hill
Soaring above Luang Prabang is Phousi Hill – a popular spot to watch the red sunset reflected in the Mekong River. Due to a scheduling anomaly, we arrived at the summit more than two hours before sunset, so we enjoyed the views through the haze from a rocky outcrop before plonking ourselves down on a bench to appreciate any hint of a passing breeze.
What followed sounded similar to everyone else’s experience at Angkor Wat, as our sunset view was gradually replaced by a view of other tourists’ backs. At times like this, I try to remind myself that we’re not in traffic, but we are traffic, so we did our best to enjoy the people watching in lieu of the sunset. Fortunately, we’d also brought couple of beers, which made the experience a lot more enjoyable than it could have been!
The food
Luang Prabang has a reputation for its international (read: French) cuisine, which seemed to cater exclusively to tourists. However, as is often the case, we found that the best food we ate was in local restaurants. One of our favourite meals was at a restaurant just around the corner from the Xieng Thong temple, where we tried Kow Beeak Sen – a soup containing slightly chewy tapioca noodles, pork, fried garlic and plenty of fresh bean shoots. To this, we added a squeeze of lime and a teaspoon of fiery chilli paste, which further elevated the experience. In fact, this really elevated the experience for Sara, since I put a very generous dollop into her bowl. By the end of the meal, she had a couple of tears running down her cheek, but still insisted she wouldn’t have it any other way!
We also thoroughly enjoyed eating at Nang Tao restaurant, where we tried Laap, a Lao favourite stir fry of meat, onion and fresh mint. I loved the contrast of the fresh herbs against the saltiness of the meat, and vowed to eat this dish a few more times before leaving Laos.
Having zoomed north by rail, it was now time to fully embrace travelling slowly with a two-day cruise up the mighty Mekong River towards the golden triangle where Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet.
Our journey from Bangkok to Nong Khai began with a metro ride to the other side of Thailand’s capital city. I’m really glad to have made a last-minute check of our departure station, as it turns out long distance trains no longer depart from the old Italian-designed station near Chinatown, and instead leave from a brand new station in the north of the Bangkok. In fact, this station is so new that we ended up walking for what felt like miles past vast, empty waiting areas before finally arriving at our platform. It actually felt more like an airport than a train station.
The train itself was without a doubt the most spacious “open sleeper” we’ve ridden so far. There were two bunkbeds on each side of the aisle, both of which were oriented parallel to the aisle, meaning there were only four beds in the space that would normally be occupied by six. On top of this, each bed was 182cm (6 foot) long, meaning that I fit exactly, albeit with my head and feet touching either end.
The train’s relative comfort meant that the 611 km journey passed in (almost) the blink of an eye.
After a slightly short night, we arrived in Nong Khai at 6:25am. It didn’t take us long to find a cafe on our route into the city, so we settled down at one of the outside tables. I optimistically asked for an off-menu orange juice and they brought out a bottle of orange Fanta. I’m not sure I can count that as one of my five a day… Still, beggars can’t be choosers when there’s only one business open and the sun is still yet to rise!
Nong Khai is by far the most pleasant border town we’ve ever visited. Situated on the Mekong River (which at this point divides Thailand and Laos), it combines a low-key, small town vibe with an immense 10 km promenade. This made for some incredible sunsets, during which the sun turned a deep shade of red as its rays passed through Thailand’s hazy atmosphere.
Nong Khai’s star attraction is the Sala Keoku, a park filled with hundreds of concrete sculptures created by the sculptor and spiritual leader Bunleua Sulilat. Many of the statues follow Buddhist or Hindu themes, including a 25 m tall seven-headed snake sheltering a seated buddha, and a collection of statues depicting reincarnation and the path to enlightenment.
Seven-headed snake statue and seated buddha
Reincarnation section entered through a mouth!
Wheel of life
Death before being reborn
The path to enlightenment
The park also featured a museum dedicated to its creator, Sulilat, which is where things started to get weird. This three storey building unsurprisingly featured many more statues, but also a contained number of personal effects from the later stages of the sculptor’s life. On the top floor of the museum, we came across wheelchairs, hospital beds, a photo of a blood-stained handkerchief (!), and right at the back of the room, the preserved body of Sulilat himself lying beneath a dusty perspex dome. We both took a quick look around before getting thoroughly creeped out and leaving rather quickly. We were very happy to get back out into the daylight.
Eyebrows to rival mine
That evening, we cycled 6 km along the promenade in search of an unlikely-sounding craft beer bar that Sara had spotted on Google Maps. We were feeling even less confident as we left the town and the promenade narrowed, but as promised, the bar eventually appeared with a stunning sunset terrace overlooking the Mekong River and Laos on the opposite bank. The setting was just incredible, and the beer at least as good as anything I’ve drank in London. We could hardly believe our luck.
We rounded off the day with a spontaneous decision to eat at a Shabu-shabu restaurant called KingKong. While a handful of restaurants in Nong Khai seemed to cater largely to the few tourists passing through, this was very clearly a local affair. The best way I can describe it is as an all-you-can-eat joint, where you cook various cuts of pork on metal plate in the centre of the table, surrounded by a moat of simmering broth for cooking vegetables. Dangerous? Yes. Delicious? Also, yes. We muddled our way through our dinner, and despite our good intentions, never quite used enough pork fat to prevent us from smoking out the surrounding tables (who were kind enough to pop over and give us some tips). Still, we had a great time, and it’s always nice to offer a source of amusement/bemusement to the staff and fellow punters.
We enjoyed Nong Khai so much that we added an extra night on to our stay, but as always, it was time to move on all too soon. Our next stop was Vientiane, the capital of Laos, just a short hop across the Mekong River. This concluded the first of two passes through Thailand, and we were already looking forward to returning on our way back down towards Malaysia.
