Vientiane: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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In 1827 King Anouvong of Vientiane rebelled against Siam, which had held Laos as a vassal for fifty years. He lost. In 1828 the Siamese army razed Vientiane almost completely, carried off the population and the treasure, and left the city to the forest — when the French explorer Francis Garnier came up the Mekong in 1867 he found a few hundred people living in a ruin. Everything in this walk is either the single temple the Siamese spared or something rebuilt on top of what they broke, and all of it sits in eight hundred metres along one street. An hour and a half. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off at every temple hall, and go before eleven.

A short history of Vientiane

In 1560 King Setthathirath moved the capital of the Lan Xang kingdom from Luang Prabang to Vientiane, and in 1566 the golden stupa of Pha That Luang was built here. In 1827, after a revolt by King Anouvong against Siam, the Siamese captured the city, destroyed it and deported many of its residents. At the end of the 19th century the French took control of it, and it became the seat of government in Laos. In 1975 the communists came to power. In 1994 the Friendship Bridge over the Mekong opened, the first bridge between Laos and Thailand.

The ten best sights in Vientiane

1
Pha That Luang
1566, 45 metres, gilded, and on the national seal. Closed Mondays and shuts for a lunch hour; about 5,000 kip. Verified 10/2026
2
Wat Si Saket
1818, the only temple left standing in 1828; over two thousand Buddhas in the cloister. Sources quote 5,000 to 30,000 kip — ask at the gate
3
Haw Phra Kaew
Built to hold the Emerald Buddha, which Siam took to Bangkok in 1779 and never gave back
4
Wat Si Muang
The city pillar temple, and the busiest working shrine in Vientiane; people come to ask, not to look
5
Wat Ong Teu
The sixteenth-century bronze Buddha here weighs several tonnes; the monastic school next door is the national one
6
Wat Mixay
Two guardian giants at the gate and a schoolyard inside; a working neighbourhood temple in the middle of town
7
Wat Hai Sok
A five-tiered roof, which is rare in Laos, right beside Ong Teu and usually empty
8
Wat Chan
On the river bank, with carved wooden doors and a bronze Buddha salvaged after the city was razed
9
Wat Sok Pa Luang
A forest temple where the monks run a herbal steam sauna and open meditation; three kilometres out
10
Wat Nak
A quiet southern monastery with a long ordination hall; the neighbourhood around it has no tourists in it

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What survived 1828

Wat Si Saket · Built in 1818 by Anouvong himself, nine years before his rebellion, and it is the only temple in Vientiane that came through 1828 intact. The reason is uncomfortable: he built it in Bangkok style rather than Lao style, and the Siamese army recognised it as one of their own and left it alone. The cloister running round the courtyard holds more than two thousand Buddha images in silver, bronze, wood and stone, many of them salvaged from the temples that were destroyed, and the wall behind them is honeycombed with hundreds of small niches holding smaller ones.
Haw Phra Kaew · Built in 1565 to hold one object: the Emerald Buddha, a small jade figure that King Setthathirath had brought from Chiang Mai when he moved his capital here five years earlier. In 1779 a Siamese army took it to Bangkok, where it sits today in the temple at the Grand Palace and is the single most important religious object in Thailand. Laos has never stopped asking for it. The hall you walk into was rebuilt in the 1930s and is now a museum of Lao bronzes with the plinth empty.
The Presidential Palace · A French Beaux-Arts building finished in 1973 as a residence for the King of Laos, who never lived in it: the monarchy was abolished in December 1975, King Savang Vatthana was sent to a re-education camp in the north, and he and the queen and the crown prince died there. The palace is now used for state receptions and is closed to the public, and you look at it over the fence from Lane Xang Avenue — which is the only way anyone has ever seen it.
Wat Ong Teu · The name means the temple of the heavy Buddha, and the figure in the main hall is exactly that: a sixteenth-century bronze several tonnes in weight, which is why it is still here — it was too heavy to carry off in 1828. The monastery beside it is the national Buddhist institute, where monks from across Laos are sent to study, so there are usually young novices in orange sitting in the courtyard with textbooks rather than alms bowls.
Wat Hai Sok · Thirty metres from Ong Teu and almost always empty, and the thing to look at is the roof: five tiers stacked one above the other, which is unusual in Laos, where two or three is the norm and the extra tiers are a Siamese and Burmese habit. It is a small, direct piece of evidence of how much traffic in ideas came up and down this river, and it costs you four minutes.
Wat Si Muang · The city pillar temple, and the busiest shrine in Vientiane — people come here to ask for things, and the floor is covered in offerings rather than tourists. The story told is that when the pillar was lowered into its pit in 1563 the spirits required a life, and a pregnant woman named Sao Si rode her horse into the hole; whether or not that happened, the shrine is treated as hers, and the right way to behave here is to buy flowers at the gate and stay out of the way.

Lane Xang: the avenue and the stupa

The French ran a hundred-metre-wide ceremonial avenue through the ruined city from the river to the great stupa, and everything the Lao state has wanted to say about itself since has been built along it. The walk is four kilometres, almost entirely straight, and it goes from a stupa stripped of its gold by an invading army, through a triumphal arch built out of cement donated for an airport, to the gilded reliquary that is on the national seal. This is the political history of Laos laid out as a street. Two hours. Start at four; the avenue has no shade at all and That Luang closes at four thirty, so on a short day do it in reverse.

That Dam · The black stupa, standing on a roundabout in the middle of the diplomatic quarter and almost entirely ignored. It was gilded once; the gold was stripped off in 1828 along with everything else portable in the city, and the brick core was left. The story that grew around it afterwards is that a seven-headed naga lives inside and defends Vientiane, and that it was asleep when the Siamese came — which is as neat a way of describing a national defeat as any monument has managed.
Nam Phu Square · The fountain square was the centre of the French town, and the buildings around it are the shophouses the colonial administration put up when it rebuilt Vientiane as the capital of its Laos protectorate in 1899 — the French chose to govern from here rather than from Luang Prabang, where the king actually lived, which is why a razed town became the capital again. The fountain itself has been turned off, restored and turned off again several times, and whether it is running is a reliable measure of the municipal budget.
Lane Xang Avenue · Named after Lan Xang, the kingdom of a million elephants, which ruled from here and from Luang Prabang from 1353 until it split into three in 1707 — and the split is why Siam was able to take all three pieces within a century. The avenue is a hundred metres wide, which in a city of under a million people with no traffic to speak of is not an engineering decision but a statement. It was laid out under the French and widened again under the republic.
Talat Sao · The morning market, and for most of the twentieth century it was a set of long wooden halls; those were cleared and replaced with a shopping mall in the 2000s, and a lot of people here will tell you that was the moment Vientiane stopped looking like itself. What survived the move are the two trades the market was always for: gold, sold by weight from dozens of small counters at the day’s posted price, and handwoven silk, which is the one thing worth buying in this city and is sold by the piece with the weaver’s province named.
Patuxai · Built between 1957 and 1968 as a memorial to those who died fighting for independence from France, and the material is the story: the cement had been supplied by the United States for a new runway at Wattay airport, and it was used for the arch instead — the nickname is the vertical runway. The design borrows the shape of the Arc de Triomphe and fills it with Lao kinnari and naga, and a sign on the interior, placed by the city itself, describes the monument as looking less impressive close up, like a monster of concrete. You can climb it; the top floor is a souvenir market.
Pha That Luang · The most important building in the country, and the reliquary on the national seal. Setthathirath built it in 1566 over a much older stupa said to contain a breastbone of the Buddha brought here by missionaries in the third century BC. The Siamese destroyed it in 1828, the French reconstructed it in the 1930s after a first attempt in 1900 was judged wrong and taken down again, and the gold you see is real gold leaf, re-applied periodically. The November festival here draws monks from the whole country and a wax-castle procession, and it is the one time the plaza is full.

The river, the market and the bombs

Vientiane sits on the outside of a bend in the Mekong and the far bank is Thailand — you can see the buildings of Nong Khai from the embankment, and that proximity has decided most of this city’s history. This walk goes along the water, back through the oldest trading streets, and ends at a small free exhibition that explains something no guidebook puts on a first page: between 1964 and 1973 the United States dropped more than two million tonnes of ordnance on Laos in a war it did not declare, which is more than it dropped on Germany and Japan combined in the Second World War, and roughly a third of the cluster submunitions failed to go off. Two hours, and the last stop needs an hour of it.

Quai Fa Ngum · The embankment you walk on is new — the river park and flood wall were finished around 2010 with Korean funding, and before that the bank here was mud and vegetable gardens. Come at six and the whole town is out on it: aerobics classes with speakers, badminton, food carts, and the sun going down behind Thailand. In the dry season from February the water drops far enough that sandbars appear in the middle of the channel and people walk out onto them, and in August it is at the top of the wall.
The Chao Anouvong statue · Put up in 2010 for the city’s 450th anniversary, and its placement is the whole statement: Anouvong, the king whose rebellion against Siam ended with Vientiane being levelled, stands on the embankment with his hand raised, facing directly across the river at Thailand. Thai commentators objected at the time. He had been a difficult figure for the Lao state to handle for a century and a half — a loser, but the only king who fought — and this is the monument that settled the argument.
Wat Chan · A small monastery right on the river bank, and the reason to step in is the bronze Buddha in the main hall and the carved wooden door panels, both of which are sixteenth century and both of which were recovered from the rubble after 1828 rather than made for this building. Nearly everything old in Vientiane has that history: the object is original and the structure around it is a twentieth-century replacement, and once you know to look for the seam you see it everywhere.
Chinatown · Three streets of Yunnanese and Vietnamese shophouses behind the river, and they are older than most of the French town — Chinese and Vietnamese traders were the people who actually repopulated Vientiane in the late nineteenth century, when the Lao population had been deported and the French needed a working town. The Vietnamese community was large enough that for part of the colonial period there were more Vietnamese than Lao living in the city.
Ban Anou Night Market · Two short lanes that fill with charcoal grills from about five, and this is where the town eats rather than where visitors do — the riverside night market with the red tents sells phone cases. What is cooked here is the actual Lao repertoire: ping kai, chicken flattened and grilled whole on split bamboo; tam mak hoong, the papaya salad, which is pounded to order and is both hotter and more pungent than the Thai version because it is made with padaek, fermented fish; and sticky rice in a woven basket, which Laos eats more of per person than any country on earth.
COPE Visitor Centre · A free exhibition inside the national rehabilitation centre, run by the organisation that makes prosthetic limbs here. The numbers it sets out are the reason to come: more than 580,000 bombing missions over Laos between 1964 and 1973, over two million tonnes of ordnance, and some 270 million cluster submunitions — the bombies — of which up to eighty million did not detonate and are still in the ground. About 20,000 Laotians have been killed or injured by them since the war ended, most of them farmers and many of them children, and clearance is funded at a rate that will take decades. One room is built from recovered casings; another holds the home-made prosthetics people made for themselves before the centre existed.

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Getting to Vientiane and getting around

Wattay International Airport · Five kilometres from the centre; a taxi is a fixed-price coupon bought at the desk, not metered
Vientiane Railway Station · The Laos–China line opened December 2021 and cut Luang Prabang from nine hours to under two
Thanaleng Station · The old Thai-gauge terminus by the bridge; this is the train to and from Bangkok, not to China
Northern Bus Station · Everything north — Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, Phonsavan. The sleeper buses leave in the evening
Talat Sao Bus Station · The city buses and the number 14 to the Friendship Bridge; the only station in walking distance
Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge · 1994, Australian-funded, and the first bridge ever built over the lower Mekong

Cheap eats in Vientiane

Lao food is not a milder Thai food — it is the other way round, and several dishes Thailand is famous for came down from here. Two things define it: sticky rice, which Laos eats more of per head than any country on earth and which is eaten with the fingers from a woven basket, and padaek, a coarse fermented fish sauce that is funkier than the clear Thai kind and is in almost everything savoury. Food is cheap and mostly cooked on the pavement: twenty to sixty thousand kip a plate, one to three dollars. And nothing here is spicy by accident — if you cannot take heat, say bo phet.

Tam mak hoong · Green papaya salad, pounded to order; a dollar. Hotter and funkier than the Thai version
Larb · The national dish: minced meat with herbs, lime and toasted rice powder. Two dollars
Khao jee pate · The Lao baguette sandwich, a dollar and a half; sold from glass carts from six in the morning
Khao piak sen · Thick hand-cut rice noodles in chicken broth; the breakfast soup, a dollar and a half
Sai oua · Lao herb sausage, grilled in a coil; sold by weight at every market and worth buying hot
Ping kai and sticky rice · A whole chicken flattened on split bamboo over coals, three dollars; the basket of rice comes with it
Mok pa · River fish steamed in a banana-leaf parcel with dill and lemongrass; two dollars at market stalls
Beerlao · A dollar for a large bottle; brewed with local jasmine rice and it holds about ninety per cent of the market
Lao coffee · From the Bolaven Plateau, planted by the French in the twenties; ordered with condensed milk and ice
Talat Khua Din food rows · Behind the mall: river fish, frogs, bamboo worms and the cheapest cooked lunch in the city

Museums in Vientiane

Vientiane has no great museum and it does have three small places that are worth more than one: a free exhibition on unexploded ordnance that is the most important hour in the city, the house of the man who ran the country for twenty years kept exactly as he left it, and a family compound of looms. The national museum is in transition — the old colonial building in the centre was closed and the collection moved out — so check where it is before walking anywhere.

COPE Visitor Centre · Free, an hour, closes at six; the single most important stop in Vientiane
Kaysone Phomvihane Museum · Three kilometres out in a walled compound; his house is kept as it was, down to the sandals
Lao Textile Museum · A private family compound of teak houses with looms working in them; four kilometres north
Haw Phra Kaew · The former royal temple, now a museum of Lao bronzes — with the Emerald Buddha’s plinth empty
Wat Si Saket cloister · Over two thousand Buddha images, most of them salvaged from temples destroyed in 1828
Lao National Museum · In transition — the central building closed and the collection moved; check before going

Holy places in Vientiane

Laos is Theravada Buddhist with a deep layer of animism under it that nobody tries to separate out: the same person will make merit at a temple in the morning and leave an offering for a house spirit in the evening, and the city pillar shrine is a spirit shrine inside a Buddhist monastery. Alms-giving at dawn is real here and not a performance. Shoes off, shoulders covered, never point your feet at a Buddha image, and women do not pass anything directly to a monk — put it down and let him take it.

Pha That Luang · Closed Mondays and shuts for lunch; the November festival is when it is full
Wat Si Muang · The city pillar; the busiest shrine in town and the one where people actually ask for things
Wat Sok Pa Luang · A forest temple where the monks run a herbal steam sauna and open meditation; bring a sarong
Buddha Park — Xieng Khuan · Twenty-five kilometres out; a concrete garden by a self-declared shaman, and genuinely strange
Wat Ong Teu · The heavy Buddha, too heavy to carry off in 1828; the national monastic school adjoins it
Wat Nak · A quiet southern monastery with a long ordination hall and no visitors at all
Wat Dong Palane · A neighbourhood temple by the market; come at six for the evening chanting

Nature and day trips near Vientiane

Vientiane itself is flat, low and green in a municipal way; what is worth leaving town for is the Mekong and what the Mekong built. The river is the Thai border here and it rises and falls by several metres between seasons, and an hour or two inland the land lifts into sandstone hills with waterfalls and, seventy kilometres north, a reservoir with hundreds of islands that was a valley until a dam closed in 1971. Nothing in this group works in the hot dry months of March to May except the water itself.

The Mekong riverfront · The embankment park is from 2010; six in the evening is when the whole town is on it
Phou Khao Khouay National Park · Fifty-six kilometres east; sandstone, waterfalls and a wild elephant population that still passes through
Nam Ngum Reservoir · Seventy kilometres north; a drowned valley with hundreds of hilltop islands and boats for hire
Tad Leuk waterfall · Inside the national park with a pool below the falls; wet season only is it worth the drive
Vang Vieng · A hundred and ten kilometres north and ninety minutes by the new train; karst, caves and lagoons
Ban Keun · A river town with a salt works that boils brine pumped from underground; forty-four kilometres out

Things to do in Vientiane with kids

Vientiane is an easy city with small children and a dull one for teenagers: it is flat, quiet, nothing is far and nothing is thrilling. The two things that genuinely work are the Buddha Park, which reads to a child as a field of giant monsters, and the river at six in the evening, when the embankment turns into a fairground of food carts and inflatable slides. Keep the middle of the day indoors; from March to May the heat here is serious.

Buddha Park · Twenty-five kilometres out; giant concrete figures you can climb on and a demon’s mouth to walk into
The riverfront at six · Inflatable slides, pedal cars, corn on the cob and aerobics; the town’s evening playground
Patuxai · Seven floors of stairs to the top and a souvenir market on the way; cheap and it kills an hour
Lao ITECC · The mall with the ice rink four kilometres east; air conditioned, and local families use it
Lao National Circus · A Soviet-built hall that still trains acrobats; performances are irregular, so ask on the day
Nam Ngum boats · A hired boat among the islands, seventy kilometres north; a full day and the best one for older children

Nightlife in Vientiane

Vientiane closes early and that is the law rather than the custom: a nationwide curfew requires bars to shut at eleven thirty, and the police do enforce it. What the city has instead is the hour before dark on the embankment, two blocks of bars behind the river, and a night market that is more shopping than drinking. Beerlao is a dollar a large bottle and comes with a glass of ice; the ice is normal here and so is sharing the bottle.

Rue Francois Ngin · Two blocks of bars and small restaurants; the closest thing here to a nightlife street, and it shuts at eleven thirty
Quai Fa Ngum at sunset · Beer, plastic chairs and the sun going down behind Thailand; the actual evening of this city
Vientiane Night Market · Red tents along the embankment from five until about ten; textiles and gadgets, and it is for visitors
Ban Anou Night Market · The local food market in two lanes; grills, papaya salad and the cheapest beer in the city
Nam Phu Square · The fountain square; a ring of restaurants with outside tables, and it is where the expats sit
Dong Palane · Two kilometres east: Lao beer gardens and grilled fish where no menu is in English

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Frequently asked questions about Vientiane

What is there to see in Vientiane?

The top sights in Vientiane are Pha That Luang, Wat Si Saket and Haw Phra Kaew. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Vientiane?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Vientiane without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Vientiane?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Vientiane, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: What survived 1828.

How do you get to Vientiane and get around?

The main ways are Wattay International Airport, Vientiane Railway Station and Thanaleng Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Vientiane, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Vientiane that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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