Study in contrasts: Wat Phou and Luang Prabang

Although my first impression of Laos was not positive - petty extortion at the Veun Kham border post - the country very quickly won me over with its friendly and welcoming people, its amazing landscape and rich cultural legacy.

For a multimedia overview of Laos please take a look at my first foray into travel videography with Laos: Lands of Peaks and Rivers.

For a country with such a long and illustrious history, stretching the millennia between the megalith carvers of the Plain of Jars to the legendary kings of Lane Xang, Laos today boasts just two world heritage sites: Wat Phou in the far south and the town of Luang Prabang in the north. While each is remarkable in its own way, only Luang Prabang features on South-East Asia's top-tier tourist trail, which has resulted in masses of visitors there while comparatively few make it to Wat Phou.

Luang Prabang

With daily flights from Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Hanoi, Luang Prabang is for many visitors an optional add-on to a holiday in Thailand or Vietnam. This in turn has fuelled tourism-related growth in the city and environs that verges on the unsustainable: traditional residents and merchants priced out of their properties in the old city; threats to the integrity of historical buildings and landscapes on which the city's world heritage depends; and environmental and infrastructure pressures as the city's hotel stock continues to grow unabated. 

 Highlighting the pace of change in Luang Prabang, the authors of a recent study have observed that visitor numbers have grown 890 percent between 1997 and 2016 (from 62,348 to 617,239) and the number of tourism-oriented businesses has grown 87 to 786 over the same period. In this context it is no surprise that UNESCO's World Heritage Committee has issued a stern warning to Laos regarding the impact of escalating development pressures on an already vulnerable landscape, nor that Luang Prabang has become rife with the tourist-targeting hustles and hassles that are practically non-existent elsewhere in the country. 

 

That being said, the Laotian authorities are clearly making efforts to manage and control development within the old city and significant investments are being made in the upkeep and restoration of key sites, notably Wat Xieng Thong. Moreover, despite the crowds and kitsch-peddling souvenir stores and night market, the old city's setting at a narrow strip of land between the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers is outstanding.

Equally impressive is Luang Prabang's urban landscape, which features the Royal Palace, dating to 1904, dozens of ornately decorated monasteries, traditional Asian shophouses as well as stately French-era mansions, all watched over by the spirits thought to inhabit Phousi, a thickly forested hill at the centre of the old city.

Some practical details (current as of July 2017): Arriving from Vang Vieng by minivan at Luang Prabang's "tourist" bus station, it cost us 60,000 LAK  for a jumbo to take us (four people) to our hotel near Wat Xieng Thong in the old city. While many wats are free to visit (with donations welcomed) some charge an entry fee, notably Wat Xieng Thong (20,000 LAK). Meanwhile, it costs 30,000 LAK to visit the Royal Palace Museum, where a dress code, especially for women, is vigorously enforced, and 20,000 LAK to climb to That Chomsi high above the old city. For those interested in learning more about Luang Prabang's oral history, what must be the world's smallest theatre mear Wat Xieng Thong offers a great two-man show every evening for 50,000. Finally, those wishing to have their clothes washed would do well to avoid the small laundry on the side street just south of Ock Pop Tok: I will spare you the details but suffice it to say that it necessitated police involvement and was undoubtedly my least pleasant experience in Laos.

Wat Phou

The contrast between Luang Prabang and Champasak, the jumping off point for most visitors to Wat Phou, could not be greater. A sleepy village strung along the west bank of the Mekong River, Champasak has a few hotels and low-key restaurants, set among crumbling colonial-era mansions and a beautiful backdrop of rice paddies and jungle-covered hills. 

Wat Phou, or Sacred Mountain, lies about ten kilometres south-west of Champasak, and for my money is the most evocative ancient Khmer site anywhere. Inscribed as a world heritage site in 2001, the temple complex was built between the 6th and 12th centuries CE amid lush forest and under the shadow of a 1,500 metre summit, which was capped for untold centuries with a carved stone Shivalinga. And as testament to the site's religous significance down through the ages, Wat Phou boasts a number of pre-Angkorian carvings, notably the "crocodile stone" which some believe served as an altar for ritual sacrifice for the area's early inhabitants.

On the day of my visit there were just a handful of visitors, mostly Laotian along with a few tourists from neighouring countries. Having been in Siem Reap just a few days previously, the different in scale - whether in relation to the crush of tourists or the overbearing visitors centre - was stark and very much welcome.

Some practical details (current as of July 2017): Staying at a hotel north of Chamapasak, we paid 120,000 LAK for a roundtrip to Wat Phou by tuk-tuk with a stop in town on the way back. Entry tickets cost 50,000 LAK. For great food and drinks at a wonderful riverside setting, try Champasak with Love near the centre of town; we liked it so much we ate and drank there almost half a dozen over the course of three days.