Three days in Vientiane: the least demanding capital in Asia, and the best bread in it

Two nights by the Mekong, with the old temples and the arch on foot or by bicycle, and a field of concrete deities out east.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Vientiane
Places
7 across 3 days
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Vientiane is a capital city of about a million people that behaves like a large town. There is one traffic jam, it lasts twenty minutes, and after seven in the evening the streets belong to people eating on the pavement. Nobody hurries and nothing is far.

It has been sacked more thoroughly than most places. The Siamese army destroyed the city in 1828 and took the Emerald Buddha away with them, so almost everything here is a rebuild, with one exception that survived because it looked Siamese. Then the French arrived, laid out boulevards and taught the country to bake, and left again in 1953.

Two nights is the right length. It gives you the temples, the strangest sculpture garden in Southeast Asia, and two evenings on the Mekong watching the sun go down over Thailand, which is directly across the water and closer than the airport.

Highlights

  • Wat Si Saket, the one temple the Siamese left standing, with several thousand Buddhas in its cloister walls
  • Pha That Luang, gilded, forty-five metres of it, and on the national seal
  • A triumphal arch built with cement the Americans donated for an airport runway
  • The Buddha Park, a field of enormous concrete deities made by a self-taught mystic in 1958
  • Baguettes, real ones, and Lao coffee from the Bolaven Plateau

Where to stay

Vientiane, two nights

Stay in the few blocks between the Mekong and Setthathirath Road, which is where the colonial buildings, the temples, the bakeries and the riverside night market all are. It is a compact grid and you can walk out of it in ten minutes.

Further out, towards Patuxai and the airport, is where the newer hotels and the embassies sit, and it is cheaper and duller. The riverfront promenade is the evening destination wherever you stay.

Day by day

Day 1 in Vientiane

The temple that survived, and the arch that should not exist

In 1828 a Siamese army razed Vientiane and carried its most sacred image, the Emerald Buddha, back to Bangkok, where it still is. One temple was left standing, apparently because it had been built in a Siamese style and the soldiers took it for one of their own. Wat Si Saket dates from 1818 and its cloister walls hold several thousand small Buddha figures in niches, which is a strange and quiet thing to walk around.

Across the road is the temple built in 1565 to house the Emerald Buddha, now a museum with an empty pedestal at the centre of it, which tells you most of what you need to know about Lao and Thai relations.

Finish at the arch. Vientiane built it in the 1960s using cement the United States had supplied to construct an airport runway, which is why locals call it the vertical runway. Climb it; the top gives you the whole city and the stairs are lined with souvenir stalls.

  1. 14:30

    Wat Si Saket

    Other

    Open from eight, small entrance fee, and the oldest building in the city. Walk the cloister slowly and look at the wooden manuscript library in the corner of the compound.

  2. 16:00

    Hophakaew Museum

    Visit

    Directly opposite, on the other side of the road. Built as King Setthathirath's royal temple, sacked twice, rebuilt in the 1930s, and now a collection of Lao bronzes around a conspicuously empty throne.

  3. 17:30

    Patuxai

    Other

    Fifteen minutes north up the boulevard. Buddhist ornament on a Napoleonic frame, seven storeys, and an honest sign inside describing it as a monster of concrete. Go up for the view at five.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner on the riverfront

    Eat

    The night market sets up along the Mekong from about six and the food stalls behind it do grilled fish, papaya salad and sticky rice. Eat facing the water; Thailand is the far bank.

With more time: That Dam, the black stupa on a roundabout between the two, is stripped of its gold and said to house a seven-headed serpent who failed to defend the city in 1828. It takes five minutes and is on the way.

Day 2 in Vientiane

Concrete gods out east, then the golden stupa

Twenty-five kilometres downriver, next to the bridge to Thailand, a self-taught priest and mystic called Bunleua Sulilat spent the late 1950s building an open field of enormous concrete sculptures mixing Buddhist and Hindu figures. There is a forty metre reclining Buddha, a three-storey pumpkin you climb into through a demon's mouth, and about two hundred other things nobody can fully explain. He later fell out with the government, crossed the river, and built a second one on the Thai side.

In the afternoon, the counterweight. The COPE centre attaches prosthetic limbs to people injured by unexploded ordnance, and its small visitor centre explains why Laos needs it: more bombs were dropped on this country between 1964 and 1973 than on Germany and Japan combined in the Second World War, and roughly a third of the cluster munitions did not go off.

Then go out to the national stupa for the end of the afternoon. It is a gilded three-tiered pyramid rebuilt in the 1930s to sixteenth-century drawings, it appears on the national seal, and in the low sun it is worth the taxi.

  1. 08:30

    Buddha Park

    Nature

    Bus 14 from the central station takes an hour for almost nothing, or a taxi 40 minutes. Go in the morning before the concrete starts radiating heat, and climb inside the pumpkin, which has three levels representing hell, earth and heaven.

  2. 14:30

    COPE Visitor Centre

    Visit

    In the grounds of the rehabilitation centre. Prosthetic limbs made from bomb casings, a good short film, and a shop whose profits fund the work. Free, an hour, and the most useful hour in Vientiane.

  3. 17:00

    Pha That Luang

    Other

    Four kilometres northeast of the centre. The gold is real leaf on the upper tiers and the cloister around it holds a good collection of Khmer and Lao images. Aim for an hour before sunset.

  4. 19:30

    Lao dinner in a colonial house

    Eat

    Several of the older restaurants near the river occupy French villas with shutters and ceiling fans. Order lap, grilled Mekong fish and sticky rice, and a bottle of Beerlao.

With more time: The Lao Textile Museum, north of the centre, is a semi-open compound of teak buildings where you can watch weavers and dyers at work, and it takes about an hour.

Day 3 in Vientiane

The luckiest temple in town, then out

Wat Si Muang is the busiest religious site in Vientiane and almost no visitors go. It holds the city pillar, and the story is that when the pillar was lowered in 1563 a pregnant woman named Si Muang threw herself into the hole as a sacrifice. People come here to have new cars blessed, to ask for children, and to be tied with white cotton thread at the wrist, which anybody may accept.

Then take a last baguette, a last iced coffee, and go. The airport is ten minutes away and the railway station half an hour.

  1. 08:30

    Wat Si Muang

    Other

    Bright, gaudy, crowded and completely unlike a museum temple, which is the point. Buy the marigolds and incense at the gate; the offering plate and the thread blessing cost almost nothing.

  2. 10:00

    Khao jee pate and coffee

    Eat

    A baguette with pate, carrot and chilli from a cart, and Lao coffee with condensed milk. Under two dollars, and the best cheap breakfast between here and Phnom Penh.

  3. 11:00

    To the airport or the border

    Travel

    Wattay is ten minutes by taxi. For Thailand, the shuttle train over the Friendship Bridge to Nong Khai takes fifteen minutes and connects with the overnight sleeper to Bangkok.

With more time: With longer, the Lao National Museum covers prehistory to the revolution in a large new building east of the centre, and the Kaysone Phomvihane Museum is a Soviet-era memorial to the country's first communist leader with his bungalow preserved behind it.

Before you go

Getting there and around

Wattay International is three kilometres from the centre, about 60,000 kip in a taxi. The Laos-China Railway station is 12 kilometres north and connects to Luang Prabang in two hours and to the Chinese border in four; a separate line runs over the river into Thailand and on to Bangkok overnight.

In town, hire a bicycle. The centre is flat, the distances are two or three kilometres, and it costs a couple of dollars a day. Tuk-tuks work otherwise and the LOCA app gives you a metered car, which removes the negotiation.

Temples and dress

Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off before entering any hall, and a small entrance fee at the larger sites. Photographs of the buildings are fine; ask before photographing monks.

Most temples open early and shut for a couple of hours over lunch. Pha That Luang looks its best in the last hour of daylight, when the gilding catches the low sun, and there is a fair chance you will have it to yourself.

Eating and drinking

Lao cooking is sticky rice with lap, a minced meat salad heavy on lime, mint and toasted rice powder, and grilled river fish. Tam mak hoong is the Lao papaya salad, considerably fiercer and funkier than the Thai version, and khao piak sen is a soft rice noodle chicken soup eaten for breakfast.

The French bakery habit stuck. Khao jee pate, a baguette with pate, pickled vegetables and chilli, costs about a dollar from a cart and is a proper lunch. Beerlao is the national beer, a lager brewed with jasmine rice, and it is genuinely good.

Money and timing

The kip has lost a great deal of value in recent years, so prices in old guidebooks are meaningless and you will be carrying large numbers of notes. Dollars and baht are accepted in tourist businesses. Take cash out in big amounts; per-withdrawal fees are steep.

November to February is dry and pleasant. March to May is hot, over 35 degrees. The rains from June to October are heavy but short, and the Mekong is at its fullest and most impressive then.

Vientiane is the capital people skip, usually on the way to Luang Prabang, and skipping it is a small mistake rather than a large one. Give it two nights and it repays them: a cloister of four thousand Buddhas, a field of concrete gods, and a wide brown river with the sun going down into another country.

Then get on the train north.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Vientiane worth visiting?
For two nights, yes. It is not spectacular and it does not pretend to be. What it offers is a handful of good temples, an extremely odd sculpture park, French bread, cheap beer and a river to watch the sun set into, all at a pace nobody else in the region manages.
How many days do you need?
Two nights. One day for the temples and the arch, one for the Buddha Park and the stupa, and a morning to leave. A third day only if you want to cycle out along the river or cross into Thailand for the day.
How do I get to Luang Prabang?
The high-speed train, about two hours, several services a day, and a fraction of what a flight costs. It replaced a ten hour bus over mountain passes. Buy tickets a few days ahead through your hotel or an agent.
What is the Buddha Park?
A field of about two hundred concrete sculptures built from 1958 by Bunleua Sulilat, a priest and shaman who combined Buddhist and Hindu imagery in a way neither religion recognises. It sits 25 kilometres downriver near the Thai bridge, takes half a day with the bus, and there is nothing else like it.
Can I cross into Thailand from here?
Easily. The Friendship Bridge is 20 kilometres southeast and there is a shuttle train, a bus and taxis. Nong Khai on the far side connects to Bangkok by overnight sleeper. Most nationalities get a Thai stamp on arrival; check your own before you go.