The Lao capital is planning new routes, night-time shows and a city pass to turn a one-night stopover into a proper stay. Some of it you can use now. Some of it is still on paper.

Updated 25 September 2026. This article was first published in December 2024, the week the Vientiane Heritage Route launched. It has been rewritten in full to cover the new tourism routes, evening attractions and city pass Vientiane announced in September 2026.

More than 2.2 million people visited Vientiane in 2025, spending over US$621 million and beating the city’s own targets of 2 million visitors and US$600 million. Getting people through the door isn’t Vientiane’s problem. Keeping them is. Most visitors stay one night, two at the most, before catching the morning train to Vang Vieng or heading back over the Friendship Bridge to Nong Khai. This month the city’s tourism department set out how it plans to change that, with new walking routes, evening shows, a city pass and a stamp-collecting passport, while the tourism ministry announced a national booking app to go with them. I’ve been to Vientiane a good number of times now, usually with no plan beyond a Beerlao on the riverfront at sunset, and I think the city has correctly identified its problem. Whether it has the right answer is another question. And if you’re heading there in the near future, you need to know which parts of the plan exist and which don’t yet.

What the City Is Proposing

The plan sits under the banner of “Slow Tourism & Cultural Heritage”, and its core is four inner routes. One covers the spiritual sites, Pha That Luang and Wat Sisaket among them. One takes in the national landmarks, Patuxai and the Presidential Palace, Haw Kham. One runs along the Mekong riverfront from Nam Phou fountain square to the night market. The fourth takes in local arts and weaving communities. If that list sounds familiar, it’s because it is more or less what every visitor to Vientiane already sees in a day, give or take a palace most people only ever look at through the railings. The more interesting part is the three outer routes, which head into Sangthong, Hadsayfong and Pakngum districts to take in temples, historical ruins, handicraft and farming villages, and protected forest such as Phou Phanang National Protected Area. That last one is a genuine surprise. There’s protected forest within reach of the capital that most visitors have never heard of, and a city that puts it on a tourist map is thinking about the right kind of traveller.

The evening plans are where the city is most candid. Officials admit Vientiane has few night-time activities for visitors, and they want to push the typical stay beyond its current one or two nights. The proposals are light shows at Patuxai, and cultural and acrobatic performances at the National Culture Hall and along the riverfront. Alongside those, the authorities are considering a Vientiane City Pass, a single ticket covering several attractions, and say they’re looking at the ticketing systems at Angkor and Hoi An for ideas. There’s also a separate City Passport you’d collect stamps in, plus more signage, QR code information points, multilingual audio guides, measures to cut plastic use, and better tour guiding. Read the wording carefully, though. The pass is being considered. The shows are proposed. None of it has a launch date, a price or a named operator, so don’t plan a trip around collecting stamps just yet.

The only part already launched is the app. On 18 September the ministry announced Lao Travel, which lets visitors book accommodation, transport and other services. An app of that name has been on Google Play since June 2025 and was updated two days before the announcement. Its App Store listing names the developer as Star Telecom and doesn’t mention the ministry, and the ministry’s announcement didn’t name a developer. It may well be a formal launch of an app that already existed, but nobody has said so. My advice is to treat it as a useful extra rather than the only way to book anything. For getting around the city, Loca is an established ride-hailing app, and it also lets you pay Lao QR codes with a foreign card, which is handy anywhere that won’t take cards directly. Kokkok Move, which only works in Vientiane, also runs a fleet of electric tuk-tuks, and lets you agree the fare in the app before you set off.

The Walk You Can Already Do

The new inner routes overlap heavily with something that already exists and works. The Vientiane Heritage Route was launched at Patuxai in December 2024 by the European Union and the Lao government, and maps 59 historical buildings in Lao and foreign architectural styles, all within about two kilometres of Nam Phou. I walked it the week it opened. At Patuxai I spoke to Vientiane locals who were proud to see their history mapped properly, and who hoped it would mark the start of a tourism push built on explaining Lao history and culture to visitors rather than just selling them things. Starting at Nam Phou, the signposts led me past colonial villas I’d walked by on earlier trips without a second glance, their pastel walls faded and shutters closed, with small Lao details worked into the French designs. The side streets around Wat Sisaket gave up corner buildings I’d never have found on my own. The route’s website, with its map and downloadable e-brochure, is still live as I write this, nearly two years on.

That Dam, the black stupa, sits on a quiet roundabout near Talat Sao, costs nothing to see, and is exactly the kind of stop the heritage route makes sure you don’t walk straight past. Photo: Gavin Cox

If you want to walk it, split it over two mornings rather than trying to do it in one go. Download the e-brochure before you set out, start at Nam Phou, and get moving early, because by late morning the heat makes the pavements hard going for much of the year. The route passes enough cafés that you can stop for a Lao coffee between buildings, and if the heat wins, a tuk-tuk will cover the rest. The best months are November to February, when it’s dry and cooler, and November usually brings the Boun That Luang festival, when monks from across the country gather at Pha That Luang. That’s the week to be in town if you can manage it, and worth booking well ahead.

Which leads me to my one worry about the new plan. The heritage route was researched, mapped and handed over to the city authorities less than two years ago, and it’s good. It deserves to be the backbone of the new inner routes, not quietly replaced by a parallel set of signs, QR codes and brochures telling visitors much the same thing. Nothing in the announcement says which way that will go. If the city folds the existing route into the new one, visitors get a better walk and the work already done isn’t wasted. If it starts again from scratch, Vientiane will have two half-promoted heritage trails covering the same two kilometres, and that helps nobody.

What Would Keep Me There a Third Night

Light shows at Patuxai might draw a crowd, and I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen one. But I’m not convinced that shortage of spectacle is what sends people off on the morning train. Vientiane’s evenings already have the riverfront, the night market and a string of bars and restaurants along the Mekong, and plenty of visitors enjoy them. What they lack is a reason to be in the city the following morning. That’s where the outer routes come in. A morning walk in Phou Phanang, or a visit to a weaving village where you can watch silk being made and buy directly from the person who made it, is the sort of thing that turns a stopover into a stay. It’s also the kind of travel that keeps money in local hands rather than in tour packages sold from elsewhere, which is the problem Laos has been wrestling with for some time.

Weaving communities feature on both the inner and outer routes; whether visitors can reach them without hiring a driver for the day will decide how many make the trip. Photo: Gerd Eichmann

The catch is getting there. None of these places is easy to reach without your own transport or a guide, and the plan’s commitment to improving guide services is where it will succeed or fail. A route that exists only as a line on a map, with no reliable way to follow it and nobody to explain what you’re looking at, won’t keep anyone an extra night. The city pass raises its own questions. Angkor’s pass works because it covers one enormous site with a single ticket office. Vientiane’s attractions are scattered, and many are working temples where monks live and locals worship, and where entry currently costs very little. A pass that bundles them sensibly and saves visitors money could work. One that simply adds a charge to places people currently wander into would not go down well, with visitors or with anyone else. The plastic measures, at least, need no debate. Anyone who has seen how much single-use plastic a night market gets through in an evening will welcome them.

Vientiane measures its tourism in nights, and it has worked out that it isn’t getting enough of them. The plans are sensible in places and vague in others, and most of them won’t exist for a while yet. But you don’t need a stamp in a City Passport to justify a third night. The heritage route is there now, with its map and e-brochure. The riverfront is there, and so is the forest on the city’s edge, if you’re willing to arrange a driver. Take the train to Vang Vieng on day three rather than day two, walk the old streets properly, and go back when the lights come on at Patuxai to see whether the city has kept its promise. If it has, Vientiane will simply have caught up with what its regular visitors have known for years: this is a capital worth more than one night.

Further Reading

• Vientiane: Southeast Asia’s Most Contemplative Capital Invites Slow Travellers
• Zero-Dollar Tourism in Laos: Recognising the Challenge, Building Better Tourism
• Luang Prabang at a Crossroads: Why Heritage Preservation Matters Now More Than Ever

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