Nuts and Bolts: Travel Tips for Luang Prabang, Laos

Making merit early morning in Luang Prabang

This page has some travel tips for Luang Prabang, Laos, to aid in planning your own trip. Remember, we are a family of five, and we travel mostly to eat. We were in Luang Prabang in mid-October, 2015. If your trip to Luang Prabang is significantly longer/shorter/with a different focus, you may have a very different experience.

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We love a good tourist trap now and then

We love Luang Prabang, but it is not representative of towns around Laos in general. It is often billed as a cultural and spiritual capital of Laos, and that may be true. But the Luang Prabang a casual visitor will experience is a big ole tourist trap. And that is fine with us. We love a good tourist trap every now and then.

Luang Prabang Weather

We were in Luang Prabang in mid-October in 2015. It was warm, but not stiflingly hot. Fall is the perfect time of year to be in this part of the world. The downside of that is things are more crowded and more expensive.

We didn’t experience any significant rainfall, or other weather events that were enough to force us to adapt our plans.

Getting to Luang Prabang

If you love boats, slow travel, and just chilling for two days, you may want to take the slow boat to Luang Prabang. The slow boat is a . . . well . . . boat that moves very slowly from Huay Xai (the Lao town across the border from Chiang Khon, Thailand) to Luang Prabang. It takes two days, making an overnight stop in Pak Beng.

We didn’t take the slow boat because we were headed to Luang Prabang from the opposite direction. It is easy to find first-hand accounts of taking this journey online. Skye Travels has a good post here.

For us, the journey was far less dramatic. We caught a bus from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang (90,000 kip each). The trip took about 5 hours of driving, plus another hour or so for breakdown. Nothing dramatic.

The scenery along the ride, on the other hand, is quite dramatic. It is possible to do this journey on a sleeper bus, but I would say the scenery makes doing it in the day the better option (and also, sleeper busses are the worst).

Sleeping in Luang Prabang for the Cheapskate Family

Even though it was high season, we didn’t book accommodation before we arrived. We did what we usually do: the kids and one parent find a café and stay there with all the bags while the other parent goes and looks for a place to stay.

The pickings were a little bit slim, but eventually we settled on Suan Keo. The rooms were fine. We got a double with AC, and a triple with fan for 100,000 kip each (NOTE: my Hawaii-dwelling daughters preferred the fans because the AC made them too cold). Suan Keo was a bit removed from the main food street, so we needed to walk through the night market each day on our way to dinner. This wouldn’t have been too bad, except the market area was covered with low-slung tarps which necessitated my walking in a semi-crouch for large portions of the journey. Not a big deal, but a bit of a strain on the lower back.

Getting Around

For sights in Luang Prabang, you can just walk. To get further afield, there are loads of tuk tuk drivers everywhere. They will accost you constantly. Just give them a polite “no, thank you” and then ignore their continued efforts when you don’t need a ride.

When you do need a ride, bargain hard. Bargaining is always part of the game, but in tourist traps it is especially necessary.

Lanterns light up evenings in Luang Prabang

Where to Eat

We had a lot of great food while we were in Luang Prabang. But as I sit here editing this post ten years after we were in the city, I find that almost every restaurant we had great meals at has closed. We had great food in Luang Prabang simply by choose the cuisine we wanted on a given night: Lao, Belgian, Mexican, etc.

If you want some great pizza, cross the small Nam Khan River and head to Pizza Phan Luang. They make great pizzas in a woodfire oven.

And we ate plenty of lunches at the sandwich, shake, and crepe stalls right across from the night market area. They are open all day. Most sandwiches were 10,000-25,000, most shakes 10,000, most crepes 10,000-15,000.

What To Do

Luang Prabang, Itself

Just wander the small strip of Luang Prabang. It is wonderfully atmospheric, has great people watching, and photographers will find no end of subjects. In Luang Prabang, the town itself is one of the great attractions.

Umbrella hanging on a door in Luang Prabang

Colorful umbrellas at the Luang Prabang's night market

The main street in Luang Prabang around sunset

Go Watch Early Morning Merit Making

Around Southeast Asia, if you get up early and go out into the streets, you are likely to see monks out walking, carrying a large metal bowl. The monks are out giving people the opportunity to develop charity and selflessness by giving donations, usually simple food, to the monks. Doing this is often called “making merit.”

Luang Prabang is a spiritual center of Laos, and therefore it has an extremely high monk population. These monks go out, in large numbers, every morning, and the devout wait to pass out offerings as the monks pass by.

This ritual is very photogenic, and, since Luang Prabang is a tourist trap, it has also become a tourist spectacle. Throngs of tourists stand each morning, watching the procession of saffron-robed monks receiving the offering from kneeling locals.

Cameras click away. Tripods block the streets. And sometimes, the spectators fail to maintain the respectful, solemn atmosphere that should be present at such a time.

Please don’t be those people.

Go and watch. Take pictures.

But be unobtrusive. Respect the monks and those giving offerings. Respect the other outsiders who, along with you, are granted tacit permission to invade this sacred moment.

Monks in the streets of Luang Prabang

Sunset Boat Ride on the Mekong

If you go down to the river before sunset, you will find boat drivers who will take you out for a sunset cruise. Again, you will need to put your bargaining skills to work, but with just a little bit of patience, we managed to book a whole boat for our family (the boat could have seated at least 30 people) for 100,000 kip (about $12US at the time) for about 90 minutes.

It was a spectacular ride. The sunset was beautiful, filling the sky with an orange glow that reflected back from the water.

This was certainly one of the highlights of Luang Prabang for us.

A boat on the Mekong at sunset in Luang Prabang

The wife in her true, queenly form on the boat

The Night Market

The night market sets up each day at about 17:00 and goes until about 23:00. If you are looking for souvenirs, this is a fun place to shop.

To See “Real Life” in Luang Prabang

You can actually escape the tourist trap part of the city and see some of the real world in action if you want to. There is a very early morning market that sells meat and vegetables. This is more of a market for locals (even though the locals are largely buying food that will be cooked in the tourist restaurants that day). If you like markets (which I do), it is worth getting up and checking it out.

The "meat" section of the early morning wet market

You can also take a small ferry across the river (5,000 kip per person in 2015) and walk in the neighborhood where the locals of Luang Prabang live. The people here are very welcoming, but remember this is real life: don’t invade private property, watch where you point your camera, and don’t be overly loud (or obnoxious).

Normal life flows, seemingly far from the tourist trap just across the river

Kuang Si Waterfall

Each time you walk through the center of the tourist part of Luang Prabang, you will be approached by taxi drivers who want to take you to see the Kuang Si Waterfall. We had to bargain hard (walking away from several drivers during our first few attempts to visit the falls) to get a price of 30,000 kip (about $4US at the time) per person for the transportation.

But the falls were worth it. You can swim in the pools, and butterflies flocked around us, even landing on us (to get at the salts deposited by our sweat).

The Kuang Si Waterfall

The wife and daughters playing in Kuang Si Waterfall

Phousi Hill

Climbing Phousi Hill for sunset is one of the must-do activities in Luang Prabang. The hill rises about 100 meters (it is 300 steps to the top) above the city and offers panoramic views.

I don’t know that I have ever been to a place that offered the consistent quality of sunsets as we were given in Luang Prabang. We stayed in the city for 10 days, and almost every night the sunset was absolutely spectacular.

It cost us 20,000 kip per person as an entrance fee (because nothing is free in a tourist trap), and it was totally worth it. And also worth the effort of climbing to the top.

Sunset from Phousi Hill

Wats (Buddhist Temples)

As the spiritual center of Laos, there are many wats in Luang Prabang. And almost all of them charge an entry fee for visitors (typical fee was 10,000 kip per person in 2015). It is a small fee, but charging entry to places of worship is one of my pet peeves. Generally, we don't go inside wats, churches, mosques, etc. that have an entrance fee. But that is just our personal choice. If you want to visit some wats, there are plenty to choose from in Luang Prabang.

Wat Haw Pha Bang 

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So go to Luang Prabang. Sure, it is a tourist trap. But it is a beautiful one. With plenty to do, great food, and stunning sunsets. Because travel is all about finding the beautiful spots in the world.