Vientiane is boring. That is the first thing everyone tells you when you mention you’re heading to the capital of Laos. They say it’s just a place to get your Thai visa renewed or a dusty transit point on the way to the karst mountains of Vang Vieng. They say there is nothing to do. They are mostly right, and that is exactly why I’ve gone back four times in the last six years.
I’m sitting at a plastic table right now, sweating through a shirt I bought in Bangkok that I thought was breathable but is definitely 100% polyester. It’s 34 degrees Celsius with 88% humidity. My Garmin says I’ve walked 14.2 kilometers today, which was a massive mistake. You don’t walk in Vientiane. You hover between air-conditioned cafes and shaded riverfront spots. If you try to ‘conquer’ this city like it’s a checklist in a guidebook, it will break you. Vientiane is like a lukewarm bath you eventually don’t want to get out of. It doesn’t demand your attention; it just waits for you to stop trying so hard.
The Beerlao myth and my unpopular opinion
I know people will disagree with me on this, and I’ll probably get some angry emails from backpackers wearing elephant pants, but Beerlao is just… fine. It is a standard, mid-tier lager. People treat it like it’s the holy grail of Asian brewing because it’s cheap and the logo looks cool on a t-shirt. I’ve probably drank fifty of them over the years, mostly because the water quality is questionable and a cold bottle is a reliable way to not get a parasite, but let’s stop pretending it’s a craft masterpiece.
I refuse to buy the merchandise. I see people in London or Melbourne wearing Beerlao shirts and it’s a massive yellow flag for ‘I spent three days in Luang Prabang and think I’m an explorer.’ If you want a real drink in Vientiane, go to the small stalls in the alleys behind Setthathirath Road and get a Lao coffee with enough condensed milk to give a horse diabetes. That’s the real fuel of the city. Beerlao is just marketing you can swallow.
The city doesn’t have a ‘vibe’ in the traditional sense. It has a pulse that is so slow you might mistake it for being dead. It isn’t. It’s just resting.
The 14.2 kilometer mistake (Don’t do this)
Last Tuesday, I decided I was going to be a ‘real’ traveler and walk from the Mekong riverfront all the way to Patuxai, the victory gate. On paper, it’s a straight shot up Avenue Lane Xang. In reality, it is a gauntlet of broken sidewalks and relentless sun. I reached the monument at 1:15 PM, looking like I had just crawled out of a swamp.
Patuxai is often called the ‘Vertical Runway’ because it was built with cement donated by the US that was supposed to be for an airport. Up close, it’s a brutalist concrete monster. It’s ugly. I love it. But I spent twenty minutes leaning against a cold stone pillar trying not to faint while a group of Chinese tourists looked at me with genuine pity. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. Vientiane isn’t a city you visit to see things. It’s a city where the ‘things’ are just excuses to move from one place to another. If you go to Patuxai, take a 15,000 Kip tuk-tuk. Don’t be a hero. Nobody is watching, and nobody cares about your step count.
The Patuxai is worth seeing exactly once, preferably from a distance while eating a sandwich.
Actually doing something meaningful
If you have a soul, you have to go to the COPE Visitor Centre. This is the only ‘tourist’ thing I insist on. Laos is the most heavily bombed country in history per capita. Between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped over two million tons of ordnance here. About 80 million submunitions didn’t explode. They are still in the ground. I spent three hours there reading the stories of farmers who lost limbs while just trying to plant rice. It’s heavy. It’s uncomfortable. It makes you feel like a privileged idiot for complaining about the heat or the slow Wi-Fi at your hotel.
- They have a collection of homemade prosthetic limbs that is heartbreaking.
- The documentary films they play are essential viewing.
- The gift shop actually funds prosthetic services, so buy something.
I might be wrong about this, but I think if you visit Vientiane and skip COPE, you haven’t actually visited Laos. You’ve just visited a theme park version of it. It’s the one place in the city that demands you wake up and pay attention.
The food is better than Hanoi (There, I said it)
I used to think Hanoi was the undisputed king of Southeast Asian street food. I was completely wrong. Vientiane has this weird, messy fusion of French technique and Lao spice that just hits harder. I’m biased because I once spent an entire week eating nothing but Khao Piak Sen (thick rice noodle soup) from a lady near the morning market, but I stand by it.
I had a personal failure moment at a stall near the central bus station in 2018. I was wearing a white linen shirt—I was in a ‘fancy traveler’ phase—and I tried to be graceful with a massive bowl of spicy noodles. One slip of the chopsticks and I looked like I’d been shot in the chest with chili oil. I had to walk back to my guesthouse with a giant red stain, and every local I passed gave me that polite, suppressed Lao smile. I deserved it.
Whatever you do, stay away from the Night Market by the river for food. It’s all cheap fried sausages and stuff that’s been sitting out too long. It’s for tourists who are afraid of flavor. Go two blocks inland. Find a place where the tables are low and the floor is a bit sticky. That’s where the good stuff is. Specifically, go to Ray’s Grille if you want a burger that will actually change your life, or Pho Zap for the best broth in the hemisphere. I’ve tracked my noodle consumption across six countries and Vientiane wins on depth of flavor every single time.
Total lie. It’s not just the flavor. It’s the fact that you can eat a world-class meal for $4 and nobody is rushing you to leave the table.
The part nobody talks about
The real reason to ‘step into Vientiane’ isn’t for the temples. Wat Si Saket is beautiful, sure, with its thousands of tiny Buddha statues, but after the tenth temple, they all start to blur together. The real draw is the lack of urgency. I work in logistics back home—everything is ‘ASAP’ and ‘urgent’ and ‘per my last email.’ Vientiane is the antidote to that corporate brain-rot.
I spent an entire afternoon yesterday just watching the Mekong. The river is retreating because of the dams upstream, which is a whole other political nightmare I won’t get into, but there’s still something hypnotic about it. You see people exercising on the promenade, kids playing, and the lights of Thailand twinkling on the other side. It’s not spectacular. It’s not Instagrammable. It’s just… life.
I think we’ve forgotten how to be bored. We travel to be constantly stimulated, to have ‘experiences’ we can package and sell to our followers. Vientiane refuses to be packaged. It’s dusty, it’s hot, the traffic is a polite but confusing dance of motorbikes, and the coffee is better than it has any right to be.
I don’t know if I’ll ever stop coming here. Every time I leave, I think ‘Okay, that was enough of that,’ and then a year later, I find myself looking at flights to Wattay International. Maybe I’m just lazy. Or maybe there’s something about a city that doesn’t try to impress you that is deeply, weirdly addictive.
If you go, don’t plan a three-day itinerary. Just book a room with a decent fan, find a cafe, and wait. The city will reveal itself to you eventually. Or it won’t. Either way, you’ll get a good nap out of it.
Just sit down.