Vientiane

Vientiane, Viang Chan in Lao, grew from a Mekong trading settlement on a fertile bend of the river, and appears in Lao chronicles long before it became a capital. In the 1560s King Setthathirath moved the seat of Lan Xang here from Luang Prabang, partly to put distance between his court and Burmese armies. He raised Pha That Luang over an older shrine and built the Haw Phra Kaew for the Emerald Buddha, and for a century and a half the city was the political centre of a kingdom that stretched across the middle Mekong.

Lan Xang broke apart in the early 18th century and Vientiane became a small kingdom under growing Siamese pressure. In 1779 a Siamese army carried the Emerald Buddha away to Thonburi. King Anouvong's revolt in the 1820s ended in defeat, and the city was sacked and left largely deserted for decades, its temples burnt and its people resettled across the river. Wat Si Saket, finished just before the revolt, was among the few buildings to survive.

The French made Vientiane the administrative capital of their Lao protectorate in the 1890s and rebuilt it with a grid of villas, offices and avenues. After independence it was the stage for Cold War politics, including the 1960 coup led by Captain Kong Le and the street fighting that followed, and the Patuxai arch rose between 1957 and 1968. In 1975 the Pathet Lao took the city and proclaimed the Lao People's Democratic Republic. The Friendship Bridge opened in 1994, and the railway from China reached the capital in 2021.

Vientiane is where Lao national culture is presented to itself and to the outside world. The Buddhist hierarchy has its seat here, the country's biggest religious festival fills the ground at Pha That Luang each November, and the state ceremonies, the national museum and the culture hall are all in the capital. Monks in orange collect alms at dawn along the same streets where office workers queue for noodle soup an hour later.

Manners are quiet and indirect. Greetings are made with the nop rather than a handshake, voices stay low, and an argument conducted loudly loses the person making it more than it gains. The baci, in which white cotton threads are tied round the wrist to call the spirits back to the body, marks weddings, departures, recoveries and the arrival of guests, and visitors are often invited to one. Bo pen nyang, roughly never mind, is the phrase heard most often.

The city looks across the river as much as inland. Thai television, music and fashion are part of daily life, and the Lao spoken in Vientiane is close to Isan speech on the Thai bank. At the same time a distinct urban culture has grown: Lao pop and hip hop, a café scene in the old shophouses, contemporary textile design, and a small art and film community. Evenings belong to the Mekong embankment, where aerobics classes, food carts and families fill the promenade into the night.

The city had about 840,000 people at the 2023 census, by far the largest urban area in Laos, though the city still feels low and unhurried: few buildings rise above a handful of storeys and the centre empties early. Residents live mostly in the outer districts of Xaysetha, Sisattanak and Sikhottabong, in single-storey houses behind gates, while the old French quarter has turned over to hotels, offices and restaurants.

The economy runs on government, trade across the Friendship Bridge, services, construction and a growing number of Chinese-funded projects, including the railway and the industrial parks near the border crossing. Special economic zones and new developments on the wetlands east of the centre have pushed the city outward. The Beerlao brewery is on the outskirts, garment factories employ many women, and tourism supports the centre. A steep fall in the value of the kip and high inflation have squeezed salaries since the early 2020s, and many young people work in Thailand.

The day begins before six with noodle soup and the alms round; offices open around eight, close for a long lunch and finish in the late afternoon. The riverfront fills at dusk with joggers, aerobics classes, food carts and the night market, and the city is quiet again well before midnight. Flooding from the Mekong, traffic on roads built for far fewer vehicles, and air thick with smoke in the March burning season are the everyday complaints.

Vientiane eats better than anywhere else in Laos, and its signature dish is nam khao: deep-fried rice balls broken up and tossed with sour fermented pork sausage, peanuts, herbs, lime and chilli, scooped into lettuce leaves. Laap, minced meat or fish dressed with lime, fish sauce, herbs and toasted ground rice, and tam mak hoong, the fiery green papaya salad with fermented fish sauce, appear at almost every meal, always with sticky rice taken by hand.

Breakfast is khao piak sen, thick hand-cut rice noodles in chicken broth, or feu, the Lao version of pho, or khao jii pâté, a baguette filled with pâté, pickled vegetables and chilli — the most useful survival of the French period, along with the city's bakeries and cafés. Mekong and Nam Ngum fish is grilled whole with lemongrass and salt as ping pa, or steamed in banana leaves with dill as mok pa. Sin savanh, sweet dried beef with sesame, is the standard snack.

Evenings belong to sin dat, a domed tabletop grill with broth in the moat around it, where friends cook meat and vegetables over charcoal for hours, and to the riverfront stalls. Beerlao, brewed on the edge of the city, is drunk with ice; Bolaven coffee from the southern plateau is served strong and sweet with condensed milk; and lao-lao rice spirit is poured at every baci.