Long before the idea of "Laos" existed, the land of valleys and mountains wedged between China, present-day Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma was home for thousands of years to Austroasiatic-speaking peoples related to the Mon and the Khmer. Their descendants are known today as the Lao Theung, the "Lao of the slopes", who still keep languages and traditions older than the arrival of the Tai. The enigmatic Plain of Jars, on the Xieng Khuang plateau, with its thousands of stone funerary urns carved between 500 BC and 500 AD, is the great testimony of these Iron Age cultures, whose exact identity remains an archaeological mystery.
Between the 8th and 13th centuries, Tai-speaking peoples (among them the ancestors of the Lao) slowly migrated south from southern China, following the rivers and organising themselves into small principalities, or muang, ruled by local chiefs. In the south of present-day Laos, by contrast, the dominant influence was the Khmer empire of Angkor. Its most spectacular mark is the Hindu temple of Wat Phou, in Champasak, a pre-Angkorian sanctuary whose first buildings went up as early as the 5th century. For centuries this land was a cultural crossroads between the Khmer world to the south, the Mon kingdoms to the west and the Tai principalities to the north, with no political unity of its own.
The first truly Lao state was born in 1353, when Prince Fa Ngum, raised at the court of Angkor and married to a daughter of the Khmer king, unified the scattered muang of the Mekong valley by fire and sword. He founded the kingdom of Lan Xang, whose name means "a million elephants", a nod to its military might. He set up his capital at Muang Sua, today's Luang Prabang, and received from the Khmer ruler the Phra Bang, a revered golden image of the Buddha that would give the city its name and became the sacred guardian of the monarchy. Fa Ngum established Theravada Buddhism as the kingdom's religion, laying the spiritual foundations of Lao identity.
For almost four centuries, Lan Xang was a power in mainland Southeast Asia, in constant tension and trade with the neighbouring kingdoms of Ayutthaya, Lanna, Burma and Dai Viet. In the 16th century, King Setthathirath moved the capital to Vientiane for strategic and defensive reasons in the face of Burmese invasions, and there he built the great golden stupa of Pha That Luang, now a national symbol that appears on the country's coat of arms. The high point came with the long reign of Sourigna Vongsa (mid-17th century), remembered as the golden age of Lan Xang: decades of peace, Buddhist splendour and international prestige, when the first European travellers and missionaries reached the court, amazed by the wealth of its temples and monasteries.
Sourigna Vongsa's death without a clear heir opened a succession crisis that tore Lan Xang apart. Around 1707 the kingdom split into three rival states: the kingdom of Luang Prabang in the north, Vientiane in the centre and Champasak in the south, along with the principality of Xieng Khuang. Divided and at odds with one another, these kingdoms were increasingly exposed to the rise of the powerful Siamese kingdom of Bangkok, which over the 18th century turned them into tributary vassals.
The most tragic episode of this decline was the rebellion of King Anouvong of Vientiane, who in 1826-1828 rose up against Siamese rule in a desperate attempt to win back Lao independence. The reprisal was brutal: in 1828 the armies of Siam razed Vientiane, looted its temples, deported much of its population to the right bank of the Mekong and left the city in ruins, swallowed by the jungle for decades. Anouvong was captured and died a prisoner in Bangkok, and much later he would become a national hero of modern Laos. By the mid-19th century, the Lao kingdoms were little more than impoverished satellites of Siam, and that is how European colonial ambition found them.
France's expansion in Indochina from its base in Vietnam and Cambodia ended up clashing with Siam's sphere of influence over the Lao lands. After the Franco-Siamese War of 1893 and gunboat diplomacy on the Mekong, Siam was forced to hand over to France all the territory on the river's left bank. This gave birth to the French protectorate of Laos, which became part of the Indochinese Union together with Vietnam and Cambodia. The French kept the king of Luang Prabang as a symbolic monarch, but concentrated the real administration in Vientiane, which was rebuilt as the capital, and in 1905 they founded the town of Pakse as a new administrative centre for the south.
For most Lao people, colonial rule was a time of relative neglect: Laos was the poorest, most remote and least populated colony of French Indochina, and France invested little in it. Even so, the colonial mark lasted. The historic centres of Vientiane, Savannakhet and Luang Prabang were laid out with French-style villas and buildings; coffee growing was introduced on the cool Bolaven Plateau around 1920; and in the far south, to get around the impassable Khone Falls and open a trade route up the Mekong to China, the French built a small narrow-gauge railway between the islands of Don Det and Don Khon, the only one the country ever had. The administration also relied on Vietnamese labour and officials, which reinforced the colony's subordinate, dependent character.
The Japanese occupation during the Second World War shattered French colonial prestige. In 1945, after Japan's surrender, the nationalist movement Lao Issara ("Free Laos") declared independence, but France took back control by force the following year. Anti-colonial pressure was unstoppable: in 1949 Laos gained autonomy within the French Union and finally, on 22 October 1953, the Kingdom of Laos achieved full independence through the Franco-Lao treaty, in the last stages of the First Indochina War. The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the 1954 Geneva Accords sealed the end of French Indochina and gave international recognition to the young kingdom.
But independence did not bring peace. The country was caught up in the logic of the Cold War and divided between three forces: the neutralists, the pro-Western right and the communist Pathet Lao movement, led by the "Red Prince" Souphanouvong and closely allied with North Vietnam. Fragile coalition governments and coups followed one another, while the Laotian Civil War became ever more entangled with the conflict in Vietnam. The Pathet Lao set up its stronghold in the remote mountains of the northeast, in Houaphan province, and the country became a chessboard for the great powers.
Although the 1962 Geneva Accords had formally guaranteed the neutrality of Laos, the country became the stage for a covert war that stayed hidden from world opinion for years. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, the network of paths North Vietnam used to supply the guerrillas in the south, ran through its territory, and the so-called Secret War was built on that reality. From 1961, the CIA funded, armed and trained an irregular army recruited mainly among the Hmong, one of the mountain minorities, under the command of General Vang Pao and based at the clandestine airstrip of Long Cheng, to fight the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese forces.
Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped around two million tonnes of bombs on Laos in some 580,000 bombing missions: according to the most widely cited estimates, the equivalent of one planeload of explosives every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. That made this small neutral country the most heavily bombed per capita in all of history. The human cost was devastating and its legacy lives on: an estimated 30 per cent of the cluster bombs failed to explode on impact, leaving Lao soil littered with tens of millions of unexploded submunitions (known as UXO, or "bombies" in local speech). Half a century later these devices still kill and maim farmers and children, especially in provinces such as Xieng Khuang, and they hold back farming and development across vast rural areas. For the Hmong people, the end of the war also meant persecution and a long exile for tens of thousands. This chapter deserves to be remembered soberly: it is one of the least known humanitarian tragedies of the 20th century.
The conflict came to an end after the US withdrawal from Indochina. With the fall of Saigon and Phnom Penh in 1975, the Pathet Lao advanced unopposed and took power. On 2 December 1975 the six-century-old monarchy was abolished and the Lao People's Democratic Republic was proclaimed, a one-party socialist state led by the Lao People's Revolutionary Party. King Savang Vatthana was forced to abdicate and was later deported with his family to a re-education camp in the north, where he died; his fate was kept quiet for years. The new regime was led by Kaysone Phomvihane, the dominant figure in Lao politics for almost two decades and a close ally of Vietnam and the Soviet Union.
The regime's early years were harsh: collectivisation, re-education camps, international isolation and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Lao people (including much of the Hmong community and the urban classes) who crossed the Mekong into Thailand as refugees. From 1986, following Vietnam's example, the government launched the New Economic Mechanism, a gradual opening to the market that kept the Party's political monopoly but allowed private property and foreign investment. Laos joined ASEAN in 1997 and slowly came out of its isolation.
21st-century Laos is still one of the most unhurried and least populated countries in Southeast Asia, with a growing economy based on hydropower (it is promoted as "the battery of Southeast Asia"), mining and a booming tourism industry drawn by Luang Prabang, the Mekong and its karst landscapes. In 2021 the high-speed railway linking the capital, Vientiane, with the Chinese border opened, a Belt and Road project that strengthens Beijing's growing influence. The country still faces old challenges, though: rural poverty, high foreign debt and the still unresolved tragedy of unexploded ordnance. Travelling through Laos today means looking into a country that carries the memory of a glorious kingdom and a secret war, and that moves forward at a slow pace along the banks of the great river that defines it.
The 5 histories, one after another. Use the buttons above to jump to the one you want.
Savannakhet, the second city of Laos, stands on the bank of the Mekong directly opposite the Thai city of Mukdahan, a strategic position that made it an early hub of trade and communication with its neighbours. In colonial times, towards the end of the 19th century, the French administration recognised it as the administrative and commercial centre of southern Laos, and its old town filled with French and Franco-Chinese colonial buildings that still shape its somewhat frozen-in-time look today.
The region also has much older roots. On the outskirts stands the That Ing Hang stupa, a 16th-century Buddhist monument that, according to tradition, holds a relic of the Buddha and remains one of the most revered shrines in the centre of the country. That blend of Buddhist spirituality and colonial heritage makes Savannakhet an unhurried stop with a melancholy charm on the banks of the great river.
Upstream from Savannakhet, also on the Mekong and facing Thailand, the small town of Thakhek keeps a French colonial feel and serves as the base for one of the most celebrated adventures in Laos: the Thakhek Loop, a multi-day motorbike circuit through the karst interior of central Laos. The route crosses limestone mountains, hidden lagoons and monumental caves, among them Konglor, a river tunnel more than seven kilometres long that you travel by boat right through the mountain.
During the Vietnam War, central Laos was a sensitive area because of its proximity to the branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran south hugging the mountain range. Today, by contrast, the region has become a nature and adventure destination, where the karst landscape — the same one that makes southern China and northern Vietnam famous — unfolds in all its grandeur.
All of central Laos revolves around the Mekong, the great artery that structures the country from north to south. Along this middle stretch the river widens and feeds rice-growing plains, and its banks are home to the main cities and the crossings into Thailand. For centuries it was the route along which trade, armies and pilgrims moved between the Lao kingdoms and their neighbours.
The French colonial imprint is especially visible in this strip: the riverside cities of the centre were administrative hubs of Indochina, and they still keep their colonial mansions, their churches and their waterside markets. Less visited than the north and the far south, central Laos offers a more authentic and peaceful version of the Mekong country.
Hemmed in by mountains in the northeast of the country, on the border with Vietnam, Houaphan province (with its capital Sam Neua) was the political and military heart of the communist Pathet Lao movement during the war. Far from Vientiane and hard to reach, its rugged geography made it the ideal refuge for the revolutionary leadership headed by Souphanouvong and Kaysone Phomvihane.
The province's most striking site is the Vieng Xai caves, a complex of natural grottoes where, between 1964 and 1973, thousands of people lived and worked underground to escape the US bombing. These caverns housed the Pathet Lao headquarters, hospitals, schools, markets and even a theatre, forming a true underground city. Today the caves are open to visitors and stand as one of the great testimonies of the Secret War, the bombing campaign that made Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history.
Beyond its historical weight, Houaphan is one of the most remote and least visited provinces in Laos, a region of cold mountains, forests and villages of ethnic minorities such as the Hmong and the Tai. Its closeness to Vietnam shaped its culture, its economy and its strategic role throughout the 20th century, and it still keeps an isolated, frontier character that leaves it off the busiest tourist routes.
The Lao north is the cradle of the nation. It was here, in the town then called Muang Sua, that Fa Ngum founded the kingdom of Lan Xang in 1353 and set up his first capital. The town later took the name Luang Prabang in honour of the Phra Bang, the golden Buddha image given by the Khmer king of Angkor to grant the monarchy Buddhist legitimacy. Nestled where the Mekong meets the Nam Khan and surrounded by mountains, for centuries it was the country's religious and dynastic centre, home to the royal family even after the political capital moved to Vientiane.
Luang Prabang keeps more than thirty golden temples, or wats, working monasteries and a historic centre where traditional Lao architecture blends with French colonial villas. That "outstanding fusion" earned it UNESCO World Heritage status in 1995. Every dawn, hundreds of Buddhist monks in saffron robes walk the streets in silence, receiving offerings of rice from local people: this is tak bat, the alms-giving procession, one of the most iconic sights in Southeast Asia.
The far north of Laos is a remote, mountainous region dominated by karst peaks rising above 2,000 metres and by rivers that for centuries were the only way to get around. Along the Nam Ou, a tributary of the Mekong, lie villages such as Nong Khiaw, tucked between picture-postcard limestone cliffs, and Muang Ngoi, a village traditionally reachable only by boat. Further northwest, Luang Namtha is the gateway to the Nam Ha nature reserve, one of the largest protected areas in the country, established in 1993.
This is also the most ethnically diverse region of Laos. Its mountains are home to dozens of peoples (Khmu, Hmong, Akha, Tai Lue, Tai Dam, Yao and many others), each with their own languages, dress and beliefs, mostly distinct from the lowland Lao. From the 16th to the 19th century these border lands passed through Burmese and Siamese hands and were a zone of wars and disputes, before becoming part of the French protectorate and, later, of independent Laos. Today trekking between hill villages is one of the great experiences of the north.
On the Xieng Khuang plateau, in the northeast, lies one of Asia's most fascinating archaeological puzzles: the Plain of Jars. It consists of thousands of tubular stone urns, some several metres tall and weighing several tonnes, scattered in groups across the hills. First studied systematically by the French archaeologist Madeleine Colani in the 1930s, they are now linked to Iron Age funerary practices between 500 BC and 500 AD. The region was a crossroads of trade routes between major cultural systems of Southeast Asia, although the exact identity of those who carved the jars remains unsolved.
In 2019 the megalithic sites of Xieng Khuang were inscribed as a World Heritage Site. For a long time, however, opening them up was held back by a grim legacy: Xieng Khuang was one of the areas hardest hit by the bombing of the Secret War, and much of the plain remained littered with unexploded ordnance for decades, so the paths had to be cleared before they could open to visitors.
For centuries southern Laos lay within the sphere of influence of the Khmer Empire of Angkor, and its most impressive testimony is Wat Phou, in Champasak: a complex of Hindu temples set against the slope of a sacred mountain on the banks of the Mekong. Its earliest buildings are pre-Angkorian — from the 5th to the 7th century — older even than the great temples of Angkor in Cambodia. In 2001 the Champasak cultural landscape, with Wat Phou at its heart, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site: a layout more than a thousand years old that expresses the Hindu vision of the relationship between nature and humanity, with an axis running from the mountain top down to the riverbank.
Later, after the break-up of Lan Xang, the Kingdom of Champasak (1713-1904) arose here, founded by a grandson of Sourigna Vongsa, the last great king of Lan Xang. It was one of the three states into which the old Kingdom of a Million Elephants split, and it survived as a tributary principality until the French arrived.
The main city of the south, Pakse, was founded by the French in 1905 as an administrative centre at the confluence of the Mekong and the Sedone River, and it was the capital of the Kingdom of Champasak until 1946. Today it is the gateway to the region and the base for its great attractions. The most distinctive is the Bolaven Plateau, a cool volcanic upland east of Pakse, dotted with impressive waterfalls such as Tad Fane and Tad Yuang and with villages of Indigenous peoples.
It was precisely Bolaven's mild climate that led French settlers to plant the country's first coffee plantations there around 1920, along the roads the colonial administration was opening. Within a few years coffee had become the plateau's main crop, especially after a research centre was set up near Paksong in 1930. A century later, Bolaven coffee is still one of the signature products of Laos and one of the best reasons to head up to this plateau of waterfalls.
In the far south, almost touching Cambodia, the Mekong widens to several kilometres across and breaks up into a maze of islands and islets known as Si Phan Don, the "four thousand islands". The main ones include Don Khong, the largest; Don Det, the liveliest and most backpacker-friendly; and Don Khon, the last two linked by a bridge. It is a land of hammocks, sunsets, rice paddies and a lazy pace, where you can still spot the rare and endangered Irrawaddy dolphins in the waters near Cambodia.
History left an unusual mark here. To get around the Khone Phapheng Falls — a series of impassable rapids that blocked navigation — the French laid a small narrow-gauge railway of about seven kilometres between Don Det and Don Khon in the early 20th century: boats were unloaded below the falls, the cargo crossed the islands by train and was reloaded upstream. It was the only railway ever to operate in Laos, designed to open a trade route up the Mekong from Cambodia to the north, and its remains — bridges and locomotives — are still preserved among the vegetation.
Vientiane was already an important city in the kingdom of Lan Xang, but it only became the capital in 1560, when King Setthathirath moved his court there from Luang Prabang, looking to the Mekong for protection against Burmese invasions and a route to the rest of Asia. It was Setthathirath who had the great golden stupa of Pha That Luang built over an old Khmer temple: today it is the country's most sacred monument and its official emblem, featured on the national coat of arms and on banknotes.
Vientiane's history was scarred by the tragedy of 1828, when Siamese armies razed the city in reprisal for King Anouvong's rebellion and left it in ruins for decades. It was the French who, after establishing the protectorate in 1893, rebuilt it and made it the administrative centre of Laos. From that era it keeps its relaxed feel, its temples (such as Wat Si Saket, the oldest still standing) and monuments like the Patuxai arch. Today it is one of the calmest capitals in the world and, since 2021, the starting point of the high-speed railway that links it to China.
Halfway between Vientiane and Luang Prabang, the Vang Vieng valley opens out among spectacular karst mountains and the Nam Song river, in a landscape of caves, blue lagoons and rice paddies. Few visitors know that during the Secret War this valley hosted a clandestine airstrip used by the US air force and the CIA, code-named "Lima Site 6", as part of air operations over northern Laos.
Decades later, Vang Vieng became one of the country's big tourist magnets. It became famous (and at times notorious) for tubing, floating down the river on inner tubes, and has now reinvented itself as an adventure and nature destination, with hot-air balloons at dawn, caving, zip lines and viewpoints. The contrast between its hidden wartime past and its backpacker present neatly sums up the layers of Laos's recent history.
The region around the capital lies along the middle stretch of the Mekong, which here forms a natural border with Thailand. It has always been a place of passage and exchange between the northern highlands and the central plains, and its history was bound up with the ups and downs of the Kingdom of Vientiane and later with the colonial and republican administrations centred on the capital.
That role as a hinge still holds today: the main roads, the new railway and the Friendship Bridges that cross the Mekong into Thailand all run through Vientiane and its surroundings. The mix of Buddhist temples, French colonial heritage, river landscapes and nearby mountains makes this region the most common gateway to the country.
Hardly anything that happened to Laos happened on its own: these are the histories next door.
