Seventeen days down the Mekong: the river that made two countries, followed the whole way

Built in 1560 by King Setthathirath at the tip of the peninsula where the two rivers meet, and the single most beautiful building in Laos. The roofs sweep in three tiers almost to the ground, the rear wall carries a tree of life in coloured glass on a red ground, and the chapel beside it holds the royal funeral carriage with seven headed nagas on the prow.

A hundred metres above the middle of the peninsula, up three hundred and some steps from the main street, with a small gilded stupa on top. The Mekong runs on one side and the Nam Khan on the other and the two meet just beyond the far end of the town. Everybody comes for sunset and the top is crowded; the western steps down are quieter than the eastern ones.

The market fills the main street from about five with textiles and lanterns, and the alley off it does a vegetarian buffet by the bowl for a couple of dollars. Add grilled Mekong fish from a cart and a Beerlao and that is the evening.

Tak bat starts around half past five and lasts twenty minutes. Several hundred monks and novices walk in order of seniority and take a handful of sticky rice from each person kneeling on the pavement. There are signs all over town asking visitors to keep back and stay quiet, and they exist because for years people did not.

Built in 1904 for King Sisavang Vong, French in plan with Lao details, and made a museum in 1975 when the monarchy was abolished and the royal family sent to a camp in the north east from which they did not return. The throne room is walled in mirror mosaic and the residential rooms are left as the family used them. Shoes and bags stay at the door.

The restaurants on the smaller river do laap, minced meat with herbs and toasted rice powder, and or lam, a stew thickened with a peppery wood that makes the mouth tingle. Sticky rice with everything, eaten by hand from a lidded basket.

A small private museum in a restored building above the town, on the ethnic groups of northern Laos: Hmong, Akha, Tai Dam, Khmu. Textiles, silver, headdresses and funeral practice, presented by people from those communities rather than about them. An hour, and the best hour indoors in the country.

Two caves in a cliff at the mouth of the Nam Ou, packed with several thousand Buddha images that villagers have been leaving here for centuries rather than destroy them. The lower cave is open to the light and full of them; the upper one is up a flight of steps in complete darkness and needs a torch. It is a working shrine and busiest at the Lao new year in April.

Most boats stop at a weaving village on the way back where lunch is available and the whisky village next door sells rice spirit with things in the bottle. Neither is compulsory and both are part of the arrangement.

A weaving centre on the Mekong bank two kilometres downstream, with a free tour every hour showing the natural dyes, the silk reeling and the looms, and weavers from several ethnic groups working on commission rather than for display. The cafe overlooks the river and the last tour is at half past four.

An hour and a half, several a day, from a station about ten kilometres north east of Luang Prabang. Book through an agent a day or two ahead: the trains fill up and the ticket system is awkward for foreigners at the counter.

Built in 1818 by the last king of Vientiane, in a Siamese rather than a Lao style, which is almost certainly why the Siamese army left it standing ten years later when it razed everything else in the city. The cloister walls carry several thousand small Buddha images in niches, and there is a wooden trough shaped like a naga used to wash them at the new year.

Across the road, built in 1565 to hold the Emerald Buddha, which the Siamese took to Bangkok in 1779 and have not returned. It is a museum of Lao religious sculpture now, and the standing bronzes along the terrace with their hands turned outward in the calling for rain posture are particular to this country.

The Mekong promenade has a night market along it and restaurants behind, and the sun sets over Thailand. Grilled fish stuffed with lemongrass, tam mak hoong, the fiercer Lao green papaya salad, and Beerlao by the large bottle.

A visitor centre run by the organisation that fits prosthetic limbs to people injured by unexploded bombs. Between 1964 and 1973 American aircraft flew over half a million bombing sorties over Laos, more tonnage than fell on Germany and Japan together in the whole Second World War, and a large share of the cluster bomblets failed to go off. The exhibits are made from what is still being cleared. Free, and an hour.

The national symbol and the thing on the state seal: a gilded stupa in three tiers, built in 1566 by King Setthathirath over a much older reliquary, sacked in 1828 and rebuilt by the French in the 1930s from a nineteenth century drawing. Go in the late afternoon if you can, when the gold takes the light, or first thing when the compound is empty.

The French bakeries around the Nam Phou fountain are a hangover from the colony and a good one. Otherwise khao poon, a spicy coconut noodle soup, from any market stall for almost nothing.

Twenty five kilometres downstream by local bus, a meadow above the Mekong filled with enormous concrete Buddhist and Hindu figures cast from 1958 onwards by a self taught monk and shaman who mixed the two religions without apology. A reclining Buddha forty metres long, a pumpkin shaped dome you enter through a demon's mouth and climb inside, and no explanation of any of it.

Seven to eight hours from the southern bus terminal in Vientiane, leaving in the morning. Ordinary air conditioned coaches rather than sleepers. Buy the ticket the day before through a guesthouse, which saves a trip out to the terminal.

A cream and ochre Catholic church of 1920 on one side of the square, still in use by a small congregation, with a squat tower and shutters and the look of a parish church transplanted from the Loire. It is the centre of the old quarter and everything else here is arranged around it.

The streets around the square hold the best collection of French colonial building in Laos: shophouses with arcaded fronts, villas behind walls, and a good deal of peeling ochre plaster. Some have been restored as guesthouses and cafes and most have not, which is what makes walking it interesting.

Two or three restaurants on the square do Lao and French food and put tables outside. Beyond that the riverfront a block west has grilled fish and beer stalls, and the whole town is out on it by seven.

A modest museum around fossils dug out of the province since the 1930s, when a French geologist found the first ones: sauropod vertebrae, teeth and a good deal of bone that the Lao name for it translates as big lizard bones. Small, cheap, staffed by people who are pleased you came.

Twelve kilometres east of town, a sixteenth century stupa on a walled platform under trees, and one of the two most sacred sites in Laos. Men only inside the inner wall, which is the rule here and is enforced. The festival in December fills the fields around it with pilgrims and there is nobody at all here on an ordinary morning.

Savannakhet has a Vietnamese population and it shows on the menus: pho, banh mi and spring rolls alongside the Lao staples, and the noodle shops near the market do it better than the restaurants.

A sixteenth century monastery on the riverbank in the middle of town, with a bronze foundry in the grounds that still casts Buddha images for temples across the region. Go at the end of the afternoon, when the novices are about and the light comes off the water.

Five to six hours south on Route 13, several departures a morning. The bus station in Pakse is some way from the centre and tuk tuks meet the arrivals; agree the fare before you get in.

The main market of the south and one of the largest in the country: coffee from the plateau in sacks, cardamom, dried fish, silk, and a food section of stalls that is the reason to come at the end of the afternoon. It is genuinely a wholesale market rather than a tourist one.

The largest temple in Pakse, on the bank of the Xe Don, with a monastic school attached and a gilded gate. It is where the town gathers for festivals and it is worth twenty minutes on the way back from the market, particularly at the evening chanting.

The Bolaven plateau east of here grows some of the best arabica in Asia and Pakse is where it is sold. Order it Lao style, strong and sweetened with condensed milk, after a bowl of noodles from any shop on the main street.

A Hindu temple to Shiva laid out on an axis running from two ruined palaces beside a baray, up terraces and a stepped causeway lined with stone posts, to a sanctuary against the cliff where a spring was channelled over the linga. The mountain behind it has a natural pinnacle the Khmers read as a linga, which is why the site is here. Look for the crocodile stone and the elephant carved on a boulder above the sanctuary.

The village below the temple is a single street of colonial buildings along the river with a handful of restaurants on it, and it is a pleasant hour before the ride back.

A large seated Buddha put up in 2011 on the hill by the Japanese bridge, three hundred steps above the town. It is not old and it does not pretend to be. What it has is the view: both rivers, the bridge, the plateau to the east and the sun going down over the Mekong.

Twelve to fourteen hours on a through ticket sold by every agent in Pakse. A Cambodian visa is bought at the window on the far side for around thirty five dollars in cash, and officials on both sides have a long habit of asking for a small extra fee. Confirm the day before whether it runs direct or changes at Stung Treng.

The lanes either side of Pub Street do amok trey, fish steamed in banana leaf with coconut and lemongrass, until late, and cost a third of what the street itself charges. Then arrange the tuk tuk and the Angkor pass for tomorrow before you sleep.

Built for Suryavarman II in the first half of the twelfth century as a Hindu temple to Vishnu and turned Buddhist a few generations later without ever being abandoned, which is why it survived at all. It faces west, unusually, which is why sunrise puts the towers against the sky rather than into it. Numbers are capped on the upper level and the queue builds fast.

Jayavarman VII's state temple at the centre of Angkor Thom, its towers carved with enormous calm faces looking out four ways. Nobody agrees whether they are the Buddha or the king and it may not be a distinction he intended. The lower gallery reliefs are the other reason to come: a market, a cockfight, a woman giving birth, and a naval battle against the Cham.

The stalls opposite the Terrace of the Elephants do fried rice, noodles and cold drinks, and your driver eats free at whichever one he steers you to. That is the arrangement and it is fine. Sit out the worst of the heat here.

Three hundred metres of terrace along the eastern side of the royal square, carved with elephants and garudas and used as the reviewing stand for the king's army and for public ceremonies. It is free to walk and easy to hurry past; look for the five headed horse at the northern end and the hidden inner wall behind the later facing.

A sprawling Buddhist monastery in the same style and by the same king as Ta Prohm, half collapsed, largely unrestored and usually empty. It is a good place to see how these temples were built, because the roofs have come down in enough places to show the corbelled construction underneath.

Across the road from the monastery, a stone landing stage with lions and nagas leading down to a large royal bathing pool. It is one of the two places in the park licensed to open at five for sunrise and it is almost as good in the late morning, when there is nobody on the terrace at all.

Any of the stalls on the small circuit will feed you. Take the middle of the day slowly: it is the hottest part of the afternoon and the temples are unpleasant in it.

The temple left in the grip of the forest, where silk cotton and strangler fig roots pour over the galleries and hold up walls that would otherwise have gone. It was founded in 1186 as a Buddhist monastery and an inscription records that several thousand people served it. Late afternoon is the time: the light is better and the famous doorways are briefly clear.

The state temple of Hariharalaya, the capital before Angkor, consecrated in 881 and the first temple mountain the Khmers built in stone rather than brick. Five stepped terraces with elephants at the corners and a later tower on top, ringed by a moat and eight brick shrines. It is the beginning of everything that follows and there is usually nobody here.

Five minutes away, six brick towers on one platform, built in 879 for the ancestors of the king who built the temple next door. What survives is the stucco: sandstone lintels and door frames and, on the brick itself, patches of the original carved plaster that once covered all of it. The oldest standing thing in the Angkor group.

There are stalls at the Banteay Srei junction and a couple of restaurants near the landmine museum. Nothing here is memorable and it is a long way to anything that is, so eat what is in front of you.

Consecrated in 967 and built not by a king but by a courtier, which may explain the scale: it is tiny, and every surface of the pink sandstone is cut with a depth the larger temples never attempt. Deities in niches, guardian monkeys, whole Ramayana scenes in relief a few centimetres deep. It opens at half past seven and closes at five, and it is thirty kilometres from town.

Six hours on one of the two good coach operators, leaving central Siem Reap between seven and eight and dropping in the middle of Phnom Penh. Book the day before, take a jumper for the air conditioning and sit forward of the wheels.

Built from 1866 when the capital moved back here, and still the king's residence, which is why part of it is shut. What is open is the throne hall and the Silver Pagoda, rebuilt in 1962 and floored with more than five thousand solid silver tiles, most of them under carpet to protect them. Shoulders and knees covered, and last entry is well before closing.

The promenade runs a couple of kilometres along the Tonle Sap to the point where it meets the Mekong, and the whole city walks it at dusk: aerobics classes with speakers, kite sellers, monks, and a line of bars in colonial shophouses on the landward side. Walk north until the two rivers are both in front of you.

Cambodian food is milder than Thai and sweeter than Vietnamese. Lok lak, seared beef with a black pepper and lime dip, and anything cooked with Kampot pepper, which is the one world class ingredient the country produces.

A suburban secondary school that the Khmer Rouge turned into Security Prison 21 in 1975. Estimates of the number held here run between twelve and twenty thousand and the known survivors are in single figures. The classrooms are left as they were found, iron beds still in them, and upstairs are the regime's own photographs of every prisoner who came through the gate.

Fifteen kilometres south, the orchard where prisoners from the school were taken to be killed. It is quiet now: grass, a lake, wooden shelters over the excavated pits and a memorial stupa in the middle holding thousands of skulls arranged by age and injury. The audio guide again, and walk the whole circuit.

The cafes around the Independence Monument and along Street 240 are the easiest reintroduction to the ordinary world: coffee, air conditioning, and nobody expecting conversation.

A terracotta red pavilion around a courtyard garden, opened in 1920, holding the finest collection of Khmer sculpture anywhere. The pre Angkorian pieces from the seventh and eighth centuries are the surprise after a week of twelfth century temples, and the reclining bronze Vishnu recovered from the West Mebon is the single best object in Cambodia.

A cream coloured art deco dome of 1937 with four arcaded wings running off it, one of the largest structures of its kind in Asia and recently restored. The jewellery and watch trade is under the dome and the food and flowers are in the wings. Touristy in parts, still a working market in others, and the building alone is worth the walk.

Three kilometres south, and the best market in the city for actually browsing: silk, silverwork, motorbike parts and a food section in the middle that does one of the good lunches in Phnom Penh. The name dates from the 1980s when Soviet expatriates shopped here, and nothing about it is Russian.

Boats leave the riverfront in the late afternoon for an hour or two on the water, out to the point where the Tonle Sap meets the Mekong and back. In November the Tonle Sap reverses its flow and empties back into the Mekong, an event the city marks with a boat race festival. Take the sunset departure and a drink.

One of the five founding monasteries of Phnom Penh, dating from 1422, on the riverfront a few minutes from the palace. It is the seat of the Cambodian Buddhist patriarch and it was badly damaged under the Khmer Rouge and rebuilt. Quiet in the early morning, when the novices are sweeping.

Kuy teav, a pork and rice noodle soup, is the Cambodian breakfast and is sold from carts and shophouses from before six. With it, iced coffee thick with condensed milk, which is how it has been drunk here since the French brought the beans.