Vientiane to the Mekong border at Huay Xai the long way round — the Plain of Jars and the bomb country behind it, Luang Prabang, and what is left of the Nam Ou now that seven dams stand on it. Long bus days, one river leg with a portage around a wall, and two days walking in Nam Ha.
Vientiane
Start at the COPE Visitor Centre, which makes prosthetic limbs for people injured by ordnance dropped more than fifty years ago and explains the arithmetic of that bombing better than anything else in the country. Then Wat Si Saket, built by Chao Anouvong in 1818 and the one temple the Siamese left standing when they sacked the city ten years later, and That Luang at dusk.
North-east to Phonsavan
Route 13 north, then Route 7 east into the mountains — about 380 kilometres and the best part of a day, because almost none of it is straight. Phonsavan is a grid laid out after 1975 for a province whose capital no longer existed, and bomb casings are used here as gateposts, planters and fence.
The Plain of Jars
Sites 1, 2 and 3, the three that are open and easily reached. Several thousand carved stone jars, iron age, understood as funerary, standing in grassland pocked with bomb craters. UNESCO listed the landscape in July 2019 — the delay had nothing to do with the archaeology and everything to do with clearance.
Muang Khoun and Ban Napia
Thirty-five kilometres south-east is the old capital of the Phuan kingdom, bombed flat between 1964 and 1969 and never really rebuilt. What survived is the sixteenth-century That Foun stupa, already hollowed out by Haw raiders in the 1870s who were after the relics, and the shell of the French church. Back via Ban Napia, where households melt scrap aluminium from ordnance and cast it into spoons.
West to Luang Prabang
Around 260 kilometres and eight hours, because Route 7 and Route 13 spend all of it climbing and descending. Sit on the left for the drop into the Nam Khan valley, and take something for travel sickness if you are prone to it.
Luang Prabang
The Royal Palace was built in 1904 for Sisavang Vong and is a museum because the monarchy was abolished in December 1975; the last king, Sisavang Vatthana, was sent to a re-education camp in Houaphanh and died there on a date that has never been officially confirmed. Wat Xieng Thong, finished about 1560, came through the sack of 1887 intact because the man leading the raiders had studied there as a novice. UNESCO listed the peninsula in 1995 and the building code has held the roofline ever since.
North to Nong Khiaw
Two limestone walls, a bridge between them and the Nam Ou underneath. Tham Pha Thok, a couple of kilometres east, is the cave the district administration worked out of through the bombing. Climb the Pha Daeng Peak viewpoint in the late afternoon, and note that the boat which used to run downstream from here to the Mekong does not: the lower river is a reservoir now.
Upriver to Muang Ngoi
An hour against the current to a village that had no road at all until a track reached it in the 2010s and still behaves as though it has none. One street, a generator schedule, and cliffs on both sides of the water.
Ban Na and the caves
Walk east out of the village through the paddy to Ban Na and Ban Huay Sen, an easy few hours each way with a river crossing or two in the wet season. Tham Kang, above the path, is where the village lived during the bombing — not a sight so much as an explanation of why the settlements here sit where they do.
Upriver to Muang Khua
The remaining navigable stretch of the Nam Ou, and the strangest transport day on this route. Partway up everyone gets out with their bags, walks up the bank to a waiting tuk-tuk, rides around the dam and boards a second boat on the flat water above it. Muang Khua sits at the confluence with the Nam Phak, crossed by a swaying suspension footbridge, with the road east to Dien Bien Phu leaving from the far side.
West to Luang Namtha
Out of the Nam Ou watershed altogether, on Route 2E to Oudomxay and then north-west. Luang Namtha is one long street, a night market and a bicycle-hire shop, and it exists on this itinerary because of what is behind it.
Into Nam Ha
The protected area was decreed in 1993 and enlarged in 1999 to about 2,224 square kilometres, and the trekking scheme built around it with UNESCO support is one of the oldest community-based operations in Asia. Book through the eco-guide unit in town: guides come from the villages, group sizes are capped and the villages are visited on a rota so that no single one absorbs all of it.
Nam Ha, second day
Out through the forest on the second half of the loop — bamboo, leeches if it has rained, and Khmu and Akha settlements where the trekking fee is a line in the village accounts rather than a tip. Back in Luang Namtha by evening.
Down to the Mekong at Huay Xai
Route 3 is the Lao section of the Kunming–Bangkok road, and it is the smoothest tarmac on this whole itinerary for exactly that reason. Huay Xai faces Chiang Khong across the Mekong; the Fourth Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge opened in 2013 and took the crossing away from the boats. It sits several kilometres out of both towns and you do not walk it — a shuttle runs between the two immigration terminals for about 25 baht, and the posts shut at ten at night. Out into Thailand here, or turn round and take the two-day slow boat back down to Luang Prabang.
Good to know
Most nationalities get 30 days, but where you take it matters: the government eVisa is honoured at the international airports and at only a short list of land checkpoints — of the Thai crossings, Friendship Bridges I and II — while everywhere else, the Huay Xai bridge at the end of this route included, means visa on arrival. That wants the fee in US dollars in cash and a passport photograph, and the officer will not change money for you. The kip lost roughly half its value against the dollar across 2022 and 2023 and prices are re-quoted often, so treat any figure older than a season as indicative. ATMs dispense kip with low per-transaction limits and a fee each time; BCEL has the widest network and there are machines in Vientiane, Phonsavan, Luang Prabang, Oudomxay, Luang Namtha and — the one that matters here — two in Nong Khiaw, at either end of the bridge. Muang Khua has a handful that are regularly empty or offline, Muang Ngoi has none at all, so draw for the whole river section in Nong Khiaw and count anything further up as luck. Xieng Khouang is among the most heavily contaminated provinces on earth: at the jar sites the concrete MAG markers show cleared ground on the white face and uncleared on the red, that is not decorative, and scrap metal is never to be picked up anywhere in the province. On the Nam Ou, the stretch below Nong Khiaw is impounded and no longer runs to the Mekong; the Nong Khiaw–Muang Ngoi hour goes daily, while the Muang Ngoi–Muang Khua boat leaves when it has enough passengers and involves getting out and walking around a dam, so ask at the boat office the afternoon before and be prepared either to charter or to take the road via Oudomxay instead. Nam Ha treks are booked in Luang Namtha with the licensed eco-guide operators, usually a day ahead, and the split between guide, village and park is fixed rather than negotiated. What does move is the per-person rate, which falls as the group fills and needs a minimum number to run at all, so a solo walker either waits a day for others to sign up or pays for the empty places. Season: November to February is dry and clear, and the mountain nights in Xieng Khouang and Luang Namtha are genuinely cold; March and April are hot and thick with agricultural smoke; June to October brings the rain, and landslides shut sections of Route 7 and Route 1 for hours or occasionally days. Northern buses leave between six and eight in the morning and there is nothing later, so a missed departure costs a whole day.
Shorter or longer?
Add four or five days: Route 7 east out of Phonsavan to the junction at Nam Noen, then Route 6 north — seven or eight hours to Sam Neua, and Vieng Xai an hour beyond it. The Pathet Lao leadership ran the country from limestone caves here between 1964 and 1973, and the audio-guided tour walks you through the bunkers and the sealed emergency chamber. The road is the worst on this route and the buses are long, which is the price.
Vientiane to Luang Prabang on the China-built railway in two hours rather than a day on a bus, then Nong Khiaw, Muang Ngoi and back. Cuts the jars, the whole north-west and every long bus day.