← All articles · Laos · 12 October 2025

Vientiane, Laos: The golden stupa that's on the banknotes, and Patuxai at sunset

Vientiane in October 2025: the gold of Pha That Luang, sunset colours behind the Patuxai arch, and a first hello to Laos at the arrivals wall.

October 2025, and a new country for both of us. We rolled in from Bangkok, and Laos starts saying hello in yellow and gold before you're even out of the arrivals hall.

The whole ten hour Vientiane layover, start to finish. Watch on YouTube

We had ten hours between flights and we used every one of them. The film follows the day from leaving Wattay airport with a taxi driver who simply stayed with us, into a cosy hotel booked for the daytime, then coffee and a fresh coconut to get going. After that it's Pha That Luang and the temple grounds around it, shrine after shrine, a local night market, and a massage before we headed back for the next flight. If you're weighing up whether a long Vientiane layover is worth leaving the airport for, that's your answer.

Inga and Dileep taking a selfie in front of a bright yellow Welcome to Laos sign in the arrivals hall — Straight off the plane and already on brand.

Vientiane is a capital that refuses to hurry. The two big landmarks are within an easy tuk-tuk of each other, and both are best taken slowly.

Selfie of Dileep and Inga in sun hats in front of the golden stupa of Pha That Luang under a blue sky — Pha That Luang, the great golden stupa. It's on the banknotes, and in person it somehow out-golds them.

Inga and Dileep in front of the Patuxai victory arch at sunset, the fountain pool reflecting the clouds — Patuxai at sunset: a Parisian silhouette dressed head to toe in Lao ornament.

Selfie of Dileep and Inga with a smiling companion in front of Patuxai at golden hour — Golden hour company at the arch.

After Bangkok's pace, Vientiane feels like someone turned the volume down and the warmth up. We stayed longer at every stop than we planned to, which tells you everything.

Photos from Vientiane

Here's the rest of that October day, in the order it happened: off the plane at lunchtime, temples all afternoon, the street at dusk, and back at the airport near midnight.

View from a terminal window over the apron at Wattay airport in Vientiane, with airstairs, ground vehicles, a shuttle bus and the control tower under piled white clouds — Wattay airport at half past one, and the clock on our ten hours started here.

The golden stupa of Pha That Luang rising above its crenellated gold outer wall, seen across mown grass under a blue sky — Pha That Luang without us in the way. The whole thing is gold, right down to the spikes on the wall.

A Lao temple hall with a red and gold tiered roof, ornate gilded columns and a golden Buddha in a small roadside shrine in front — One of the temple halls sharing the grounds with the stupa. Every surface has been given something to do.

Painted temple ceiling in red and white with gold mandala roundels and rows of framed murals showing scenes from Buddhist stories — Look up. Rows of painted panels, mandalas in the middle, and an electric fan doing its best in the corner.

Inga in a white sun hat standing beside an open temple window framed by painted murals, another gilded temple roof visible through the opening — Every window here frames another roof. It's temples all the way down.

A dark carved stone finial with gold detailing in front of the orange tiled roofs and gilded eaves of a Lao temple — Weathered stone against fresh gold and terracotta, which is Vientiane's colour scheme in one frame.

Inga in a sun hat standing in a temple courtyard with a wooden pavilion behind her and a tour group walking past in the afternoon sun — Mid-afternoon in the courtyard, sharing it with exactly one tour group.

Three ornate white and gold memorial shrines with red-tiled steps beside a temple pavilion, one holding a standing golden Buddha — A smaller compound on the way back into town, with three shrines competing politely for attention.

A Vientiane street with a red hammer and sickle banner and the Lao national flag hanging from lamp posts, scaffolding on a half-built block and motorbikes in the traffic — Downtown at dusk. Banners on the lamp posts, scaffolding on the new blocks, motorbikes threading through both.

Inga standing on a Vientiane pavement under a hanging Lao flag, with covered night market stalls under blue tarpaulins along the kerb behind her — The night market getting itself ready under the tarpaulins, an hour or so before it properly wakes up.

Selfie of Dileep and Inga in front of a large carved wooden relief of a royal barge with mythical serpents, on a painted sunset background at Wattay airport — Back at Wattay just before ten, in front of the carved barge that sends everybody home.

Rows of blue seats filling the departures hall at Wattay airport in Vientiane late at night, with a Terminal Bistro counter along the left wall — Half past eleven at night, ten hours done, and everybody waiting for the same red-eye.

We stayed at the Ali Grand Hotel.