As Southeast Asia is an escape from Hong Kong, so Laos is an escape from the rest of Southeast Asia. There are no touts pestering tourists on the streets, no traffic jams, not even that many sights to see. The highlight of the country, the northern town of Luang Prabang, is a Unesco World Heritage site but it is not so much a tourist magnet as it is an oasis of calm, with quaint, leafy streets and bistros in which one can just, well, 'chill'.
Backpackers, having finally tired of the Thai islands, now characterised by beach parties that are too hedonistic and high-end resorts that are too expensive, have begun to migrate to Laos. They often begin to the south, on a budget airline flight from Bangkok to Udon Thani, from where the Thai-Lao border is only a short bus ride away.
AT THE BORDER, A BUS, full of Lao grocery shoppers returning from a Thai supermarket expedition, lurches across the bridge spanning the Mekong River and into the Lao People's Democratic Republic.
Vientiane is a half-hour taxi ride away, and as soon as you arrive, you can tell this is no ordinary Southeast Asian capital. There are no traces of Kuala Lumpur, no hints of Singapore or Jakarta, or even Phnom Penh. Vientiane is a sleepy capital, its main roads bereft of traffic on a weekday afternoon.
One of the few must-sees in Vientiane is Pha That Luang, a gigantic, glimmering, gold Buddhist stupa that dates back to the 16th century. But, even at this landmark, a national icon that adorns the country's banknotes, the visitor is likely to have the whole place to himself.
After Vientiane, many travellers make their way to Vang Vieng, a place that seems to exist simply because it is the halfway point between the capital and Luang Prabang. Once home to an airstrip used secretly by the CIA to land bomber aircraft, the town is now overrun by a different type of foreigner: gap-year westerners prone to wildly exaggerated travel stories.
Vang Vieng is straight out of the backpacker's guide to the galaxy: cheap guesthouses, internet cafes and bars flooded with Beer Lao, widely considered the best brew in Southeast Asia. Then there are the restaurant-cum-TV rooms. Every block has two or three, furnished with rows of cushions and invariably broadcasting Friends DVDs, which, judging by the muted laughs, are overly familiar to the audiences.
