You can eat at cafes, street stalls, beer halls or restaurants, offering everything from rice noodles to filet mignon. For good Lao meals, try the Dong Palan Night Market on the east bank of the Nong Chan ponds. Tribal crafts, fabrics, jewellery and furniture are all good buys in Vientiane. This 'city' is just barely waking from a long slumber brought on by decades of war and revolution. Luang Prabang has only 16,000 residents and few concessions to 20th-century living, save for infrequent electricity and a few cars and trucks.
Rush hour occurs when school students are let out and the streets fill with bicycles.
Sights include the Royal Palace Museum, Wat Xieng Thong and Wat Wisunlat. For those interested in war history, the Ho Chi Minh Trail is a network of dirt paths and gravel roads littered with war junk running parallel to the Laos-Vietnam border. It is best accessed near Xepon. The trail was used by the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam War and by the Viet Minh against the French in the 1950s. The Bolaven Plateau is a fertile area with coffee and tea crops, several interesting Mon-Khmer ethnic groups, and beautiful waterfalls.