Laos runs at river speed. Book the days that matter.
Which Kuang Si trip stops at the pools before the minibuses arrive. What the Pak Ou cave boat really costs. Whether Vang Vieng is worth two nights or four. Reviews of the tours you can book across Laos.
The day almost everyone books firstCruise to Pak Ou Caves & Kuang Si Waterfalls
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $48
The falls, the river caves, a kitchen in Luang Prabang, the Vientiane temples.
Four bookings a first trip through Laos is usually built around. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
- 01The one big dayCruise to Pak Ou Caves & Kuang Si WaterfallsUpriver to the Buddha caves in the morning, the turquoise pools at Kuang Si after lunch. One boat, both of the sights people fly in for.
02The water dayKayaking & Cave Tubing with Zip Line/Blue LagoonKayaks on the Nam Song, a headtorch through a cave, then the lagoon. Vang Vieng in a single soaked afternoon.
03The eveningEvening Cooking Class & Local Baci CeremonyA market shop, a charcoal stove and a baci ceremony to finish. Book it for the night you arrive tired.
04The capital, sortedCultural Tour with Buddha Park and PatuxayPatuxai, the golden stupa and the sculpture park out by the river. Vientiane makes sense in half a day with a guide.
The days out more travellers book than anything else in Laos.
Every Lao tour we have reviewed →One river cruise carries more travellers than the rest of the country put together. Here is what it is, and what comes next.
1
Cruise to Pak Ou Caves & Kuang Si Waterfalls
Spend about nine hours beyond Luang Prabang with a Mekong boat ride, Ban Xang Hai whiskey tasting, Pak Ou Caves, Kuang Si Falls, a Hmong village, and buffet lunch. Pickup, transport, drinks, and entrance fees are covered. Guide quality varies, but names often praised include Pong, Ping Pong, Tony, Da, Thin, and Vone.
From · $48
Read our review →
2
Cruise to Pak Ou Caves & Kuang Si Waterfalls
from $52
3
Kayaking & Cave Tubing with Zip Line/Blue Lagoon
from $30
4
Half Day Mekong Cruise to Pak Ou Caves (Morning / Afternoon)
from $40
5
UNESCO World Heritage City Highlights Tour
from $35
6
Namxay Viewpoint, Blue Lagoon 1 & Phoukham Cave
from $29
7
Afternoon Kuang Si Waterfalls & Sunset Cruise
from $35
8
Evening Cooking Class & Local Baci Ceremony
from $51
Longtail upriver, kayak downstream, or a deck for the sunset.
The Mekong and the Nam Ou are the country's oldest roads and still the best way to see it. Three kinds of river day, what boarding each one costs, and which town it leaves from.
Three towns and the sights strung along the road between them.
A UNESCO river town of gilded temples, the karst valley everyone stops in on the way south, the low-rise capital on the Thai border. Plus the waterfall, the cave and the limestone the whole country is built on.
Luang Prabang: alms at six, the falls after lunch.
Everything in Luang Prabang →
The old town sits on a spit between the Mekong and the Nam Khan, small enough to walk and stacked with gilded roofs. Everything else is a boat ride or a minibus away. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the town.
Half day at Kuang Si, or the full loop
A half day gets you to the pools and back. The full day adds the Buddha caves upriver or a trek in through the villages, and costs roughly double. Both swim.
A market basket, then a charcoal stove
Classes start at the morning market, sorting river weed and lemongrass, and end with the sticky rice you steamed yourself. The evening ones finish with a baci blessing.
Wat Xieng Thong and the alms round
Monks collect rice at daybreak down Sakkaline Road. A guide keeps you at the respectful distance most visitors miss, then walks you through the royal temples before the heat.
The falls at Kuang Si and the caves under the karst.
Kuang Si drops through a staircase of turquoise pools an hour out of town, and you can swim in most of them. The caves are the other half of the same rock: Buddha caves above the Mekong, water caves you float into on a tube at Vang Vieng.
Vang Vieng stopped being a party and became an adventure town.
The tubing bars closed and the valley kept the good part: kayaks on the Nam Song, caves you swim into on an inner tube, a zip line strung between karst towers and balloons over the paddies at first light.
Half of Laos is learned at a low table with someone teaching you.
Sticky rice steamed in a bamboo basket, indigo dyed in a clay pot, silk thrown on a foot loom, a bowl of khao soi that has nothing to do with the Thai one. The workshops here are small, cheap and run by the family whose kitchen you are sitting in.
Every workshop and food day →
Vientiane is a capital that still shuts for lunch.
Low buildings, a French arch built from runway concrete, a gilded stupa on the national seal and a riverside park full of concrete gods an hour downstream. Two nights is plenty, half a day with a guide covers the lot.
- 1Vientiane Cultural Tour with Private Guidefrom $125
- 2Cultural Tour with Buddha Park and Patuxayfrom $58
- 3Half-Day City Tour with Patuxai and Buddha Parkfrom $52
What a day out in Laos actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Laos is cheap by the standards of the region, and the best day on the river is nowhere near the dearest.
Half days at the falls, cave boats, city walks, cooking classes and the kayak runs out of Vang Vieng.
Full-day river cruises, the Kuang Si and Pak Ou combination, private guides in Vientiane and the balloon flight.
Multi-day slow boats, chartered cars with a driver, and the small-group treks that sleep in a village.
Three things that happen in Laos and nowhere else.
Waterfalls and cooking classes exist all over Southeast Asia. A cliff cave stacked with four thousand abandoned Buddhas, a hillside of Iron Age stone jars and a loom in a Mekong village do not.
The Pak Ou Caves
Two caves bite into the limestone where the Nam Ou meets the Mekong, packed with thousands of Buddha figures left by villagers over four centuries. The lower one is daylight and crowds; the upper one is a torch, a steep stair and nobody. Boats leave Luang Prabang mid-morning and stop at the whisky village on the way back.
- 1Cruise to Pak Ou Caves & Kuang Si Waterfalls★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,769 reviews
- 2Cruise to Pak Ou Caves & Kuang Si Waterfalls★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,360 reviews
- 3Half Day Mekong Cruise to Pak Ou Caves (Morning / Afternoon)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 290 reviews
Silk, indigo and bamboo
Lao weaving is a village craft that never industrialised. Indigo comes out of a fermenting clay pot, silk is thrown on a wooden foot loom, and the patterns carry family meaning rather than fashion. A workshop runs three or four hours and you leave with the scarf you botched and then got right.
- 1Bamboo Weaving Workshop & Cooking Class★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 96 reviews
- 2Day-time Bamboo weaving & Cooking Classes join-in★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 38 reviews
- 3Evening Bamboo weaving & Cooking classes join-in★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 17 reviews
The Plain of Jars
Thousands of carved stone jars, some of them chest high, sit on hillsides around Phonsavan. Nobody is certain what they held two thousand years ago. The ground between them is still being cleared of unexploded ordnance, so you walk the marked lanes and stay inside them.
- 1Plain of jars tour with local guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 8 reviews
- 2Plain of jars share group tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4 reviews
- 3Plain of jars private tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3 reviews
Four Lao bookings that will not wait for the morning.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast at your guesthouse. These four run on sunrise departures, one boat a day and a licence count that does not grow in high season.
- 01Hot Air Balloon Ride with City Hotel PickupBalloons fly at dawn and again at sunset, and a valley this narrow holds only a handful of baskets. High season sells them out days ahead.
- 022-Day Transfer to Luang Prabang by Slow BoatThe slow boat down to Luang Prabang leaves once a day and sleeps you in Pakbeng halfway. Miss the departure and you lose two days, not two hours.
- 03Cruise to Pak Ou Caves & Kuang Si WaterfallsThe cave boats go up in the morning, when the light is still in the cliff and the water is low enough to land. Afternoon departures are a different, lesser trip.
- 04Evening Cooking Class & Local Baci CeremonyClasses are capped at a household kitchen table, often six or eight people, and the good ones in Luang Prabang book out a couple of days in advance.
When the rain comes in and the river turns the colour of tea.
May to October fills the waterfalls and makes them spectacular, and it also swells the Nam Song, shortens the kayak runs and puts the mountain roads under water for a day at a time. March and April bring the other problem: farmers burn the fields and the valleys go hazy. Both have the same answer. Go indoors, go local, and eat well.
Luang Prabang to Vientiane: the stretch nearly every first trip follows.
VientianeBy place: river town, karst valley, capital
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