Travel Destinations - Laos

Luang Prabang: Don't Call Me Boutique

It may be heading up-market but Southeast Asia's latest 'darling destination' hasn't sold its soul, as Gary Bowerman discovers during a visit to sleepy Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang airport's tiny landing strip would fit inside many a mall parking lot. The terminal resembles a small municipal office built to process meaningless administrative documents rather than a rising volume of tourist passports.

Inside, courteous staff wearing pressed green military uniforms sit behind carved-wood customs booths, directing operations [ read more ]

Vientiane: Tales of the Unexpected

Silks hanging outside a workshop in Vientiane
Trans-continental cyclist Edward Genochio navigates the pristine jungle and quaint stilted villages of Laos, ever watchful for cannonball coconuts, farmers on skateboards and Christmas pudding-shaped models of the Buddhist-Hindu universe

Twenty-seven kilometres east of Vientiane, in a garden of close-clipped lawns and pink blossoms on the quiet banks of the Mekong, you will find the Xieng Khuan Buddha Park. Asia is not short on curiosities, but this one makes my Top Ten. Here, in this idiosyncratic conception of a unified [ read more ]

Luang Prabang: Kingdom Calm

Wat Mai, chapel to the royal palace, is renowned for its gilded stucco wall - the basrelief represents the legend of Phra Vet, the penultimate reincarnation of the Buddha, with scenes of old Luang Prabang life
As the ancient royal capital of Laos, Luang Prabang has an awe-inspiring history - but that doesn't stop Keith Mundy, or the locals, letting it all hang out

Languid Luang Prabang has seen more dramatic changes than its comfy sleepiness might suggest. First the ancient royal seat of Laos, then the French provincial capital, this river port on the wide, muddy Mekong fell under Lao People's Revolutionary Party rule in 1975.

Surviving all these changes, it has taken [ read more ]