Doing this without damage
Five specific things about travelling in Laos where the easy option and the right one differ, and what we do about each.
Why this page is specific
Most responsible travel pages are a list of intentions. This one is a list of decisions, because in Laos there are five particular places where the easy option and the right one come apart, and a traveller cannot see most of them from the outside.
1. Unexploded ordnance
Laos was subjected to an extraordinary volume of aerial bombing between 1964 and 1973, much of it cluster munitions. A large proportion failed to detonate and remains in the ground. People are still killed and injured every year, disproportionately children and farmers, and clearance at current rates is a project measured in decades.
What we do: our guides brief every group before any walking away from a road, we take travellers to the MAG centre in Phonsavan and to COPE in Vientiane rather than treating the subject as a downer, and we stay on marked paths absolutely.
What we ask of you: stay on the path, do not pick up anything metal, do not let children run ahead at the jar sites. And go to COPE. It takes an hour, it is free, and it is the most useful hour anyone spends in Vientiane.
2. Elephants
We do not book elephant riding, elephant bathing, or any camp where visitors sit on an animal. Riding requires a training process that is not defensible, and bathing experiences have their own welfare problems that are less obvious and better hidden.
What we will book is a visit to a genuine conservation and rescue project where the animals are not ridden, where you observe rather than handle, and where the herd structure is the point. There is one such centre in Sayaboury province and we will tell you honestly what a visit there is and is not.
If elephant riding is what you want, we are not the right operator, and there is no version of this conversation where we change our mind.
3. Village visits and homestays
The failure mode here is a village that becomes a stop: a bus arrives, thirty people photograph a woman weaving, and the money goes to whoever owns the bus. Everyone can see it is wrong and it is remarkably common.
What we do instead: the villages we stay in run a rota, set by the village, that moves the guests and the income between households. Payment goes directly to the host and to a village fund. Our guides are from the district rather than from Luang Prabang. And we stay the night rather than pass through, because an overnight guest is in a different relationship to a household than a photograph is.
What we ask of you: ask before photographing anyone, particularly children. Do not hand out sweets, pens or money to children - it teaches begging and displaces the school. Accept food you are offered. Follow the guide on where you may walk.
4. The alms round
The dawn alms round in Luang Prabang is a religious observance that has been seriously damaged by mass photography - flash in faces, visitors kneeling in the line, tour groups walking backwards in front of monks.
If you watch it: opposite side of the street, well back, no flash, standing rather than kneeling, and no closer than several metres. Do not buy sticky rice from the vendors who sell it to visitors to offer; the rice is often poor and the practice turned an act of merit into a transaction.
Our guides brief this properly the night before and will not take a group that does not intend to follow it.
5. Where the money goes
Two mechanisms that we think matter more than any policy statement.
- Guides are paid a fixed day rate whether you buy anything or not. That single fact removes the reason every commission stop exists, and it is why our itineraries contain no gem shops, no silk factories, no whisky village stalls and no coffee showrooms.
- We use locally owned accommodation wherever there is a good one. Most of the small hotels on our itineraries are owner-operated, which keeps a much larger share of the room rate in the town it was earned in.
We do not claim a percentage figure for local retention, because operators who publish those numbers rarely explain how they calculated them, and we would rather describe the mechanism than quote a statistic you cannot check.
Things we get wrong
- We fly people from Vientiane to Pakse rather than lose two days to the road, and that flight has a carbon cost we are not going to pretend away.
- Our trips put vehicles on roads through villages that were quieter before tourism reached them. Small-group travel reduces that; it does not remove it.
- We buy bottled water in places with no safe alternative, and we have not solved that beyond giving every traveller a refillable bottle and using refill stations where they exist.
If those things are dealbreakers, that is a reasonable position and we would rather you knew now.
Questions travellers ask most
Do you offer any elephant experiences?
Only a visit to a conservation and rescue project where the animals are not ridden and visitors observe rather than handle.
No riding, no bathing, no camps. This is not negotiable and it does not change with the size of the booking.
Is it safe to walk in rural areas because of UXO?
On established paths and with a local guide, yes, and that is how millions of Lao people live their lives.
The risk comes from walking off paths, digging, or picking up metal objects. Follow your guide exactly and the risk is negligible.
Should we bring gifts for villages?
Not sweets, pens or money for children. If you want to contribute, ask your guide before the trip and we will tell you what the village fund actually needs, which is usually school materials bought locally.
Buying something a household makes, at the price they ask, is better than a gift.
How do we know you actually do this?
Ask the guide, on the trip, how they are paid. Ask the homestay host how the rota works. Both will tell you.
And count the shopping stops in your itinerary before you book. That number is the most reliable indicator in this industry.
Read next
Tell us what you want out of Laos
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.