Luang Prabang

The site was settled long before it was royal: known as Muang Sua and later Xieng Dong Xieng Thong, it commanded the meeting of the Mekong and the Nam Khan on the trade route between the upper river and the Lao plains. In 1353 Fa Ngum founded the kingdom of Lan Xang here with Khmer support, and the town took its present name from the Phra Bang, the golden Buddha image that became the dynasty's emblem. King Setthathirath moved the capital to Vientiane in the 1560s, but Luang Prabang kept the Phra Bang, its monasteries and its prestige, and when Lan Xang broke apart in 1707 it became the seat of its own kingdom, which later paid tribute to Siam.

In 1887 the town was sacked and burned by Chinese Haw raiders; the French envoy Auguste Pavie helped King Oun Kham escape, and the episode drew Laos into the French protectorate declared in 1893. The monarchy stayed in Luang Prabang under French rule, and the palace on the riverbank was built for King Sisavang Vong in 1904. French administrators added the brick and stucco shophouses that stand among the monasteries, giving the centre its mixture of steep temple roofs and shuttered façades.

Independence, war and revolution followed. The Pathet Lao abolished the monarchy in 1975, and the last king, Savang Vatthana, was taken to a camp in Houaphanh, where he died. The town was closed and quiet for years. UNESCO inscribed the centre on the World Heritage List in 1995 for the way its monasteries and colonial buildings survive together, tourism grew quickly afterwards, and the Laos–China Railway reached the town in 2021.

Luang Prabang is the religious centre of Lao Buddhism, and the calendar of its monasteries still sets the rhythm of the town. Dozens of wats house novices, many of them boys sent from villages in the hills for an education, and their orange robes are part of every street scene. Before sunrise the monks walk in single file along the main road for tak bat, collecting sticky rice from kneeling residents — a ceremony that has become a point of friction where visitors crowd too close.

The town's identity is also royal. Court traditions shaped its cooking, its silverwork and its classical dance, and Pi Mai in April is celebrated here with processions of the Phra Bang, masked figures representing the town's guardian spirits and a long week of ceremony that ends with sand stupas built on the riverbank. At the end of Buddhist Lent in October, candle-lit floats are set on the Mekong and villages race longboats.

Crafts survive in the villages around the town: weaving in silk and cotton, mulberry paper, silverwork and, across the Mekong, pottery. Hmong embroidery is sold at the night market. Manners are quiet and formal by Southeast Asian standards — a soft voice, the nop rather than a handshake, shoulders covered near temples — and the heritage rules that limit new building and keep the centre low-rise are part of how residents see the place.

The town is small — its protected centre takes in 33 of its 58 villages, while the province around it held some 432,000 people at the last census. Rents and heritage rules there have pushed families out to Ban Phosi and the newer districts to the south-west, where schools, offices and the produce market are, so the peninsula is now mostly guesthouses, restaurants, shops and monasteries with a resident core of monks and older households.

Tourism is the main employer, alongside government, small trade and farming in the villages within a few kilometres. The railway changed the town's position: Vientiane is a couple of hours away, Chinese visitors and goods arrive directly, and land near the station has risen in value. The gains are uneven, and seasonal — the wet months are slow — while young people commonly go to Vientiane or Thailand for work.

The day starts before dawn with the alms round and the market, and the heat of the afternoon empties the streets. Evening belongs to the night market, the riverside restaurants and the food lane, and and the old town goes quiet early, with little open late. Ordinary concerns are the cost of living and a national currency that has lost value against the baht and the dollar, the pressure of visitor numbers on a small centre, and river levels that fall further each dry season.

Luang Prabang has the most distinctive cooking in Laos, refined by the royal court and shaped by the forest and the river. Or lam, the dish most associated with the town, is a thick stew of meat or offal with aubergine, long beans, dill and wood-ear mushrooms, given a numbing heat by sakhan, a peppery climbing vine, and thickened with crushed sticky rice. Jaew bong, a dark sweet-smoky chilli paste made with garlic, galangal and strips of dried buffalo skin, is eaten with sticky rice and raw vegetables and carried home by the jar.

The river provides khai paen, sheets of Mekong weed pressed with sesame seeds, tomato and garlic, dried in the sun and fried until brittle, usually served with jaew bong. Grilled fish stuffed with lemongrass, sai oua — coarse pork sausage with lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime — and mok pa, fish steamed in banana leaf, appear at every market grill. Breakfast is khao soi, flat rice noodles in a clear broth topped with a spicy minced pork and tomato sauce, or khao piak sen, soft hand-cut noodles in chicken soup.

Sticky rice, eaten with the fingers from a woven basket, accompanies almost everything, and laap, minced meat with herbs, lime and toasted rice powder, is the dish of celebrations. French influence survives in baguettes and pastries and in strong Lao coffee served with condensed milk, and lao-lao, a clear rice spirit, and lao hai, a communal rice beer drunk through reeds, are poured at festivals.