South Vietnam to Laos

Once you have arrived in Ho Chi Minh City’s airport, our guide will collect you and take you to your downtown hotel. After checking in, you have the rest of the day to yourself. Perhaps you could check out some of the museums that exhibit the various histories of Saigon through its long and turbulent past.

After your included hotel breakfast, our guide arrives at 08:00 to take you to the Cu Chi Tunnels, 2 hours northwest of Ho Chi Minh City. Here we will find an underground network covering 250km below the jungle’s undergrowth, where Viet Cong hid for years, storing weapons, treating the wounded and planning strategies against Saigon. 

A short introduction video will outline the tunnels and their uses before we dig deeper by seeing the subterranean network first-hand. After some time examining the various rooms and hearing of the tribulations undergone by the Viet Cong while down here, we climb back out and find some of the scars of war in the shell of an American tank and some of the bomb craters created by B52 bombers.

Following lunch at a restaurant nearby, we return to Ho Chi Minh City and start the city tour. We begin in the west of the city at the Giac Lam Pagoda, the city’s oldest pagoda standing since 1774. We then head to Cho Lon, an enclave for Chinese residents and Chinese culture, where we will find the small, but very ornate Thien Hau Pagoda. We stroll around Cho Lon for a while before finishing the tour at Ben Thanh Market, where our guide will help you to haggle for any jewellery, clothing, food, electronics or art that may grab your attention.

Make your own arrangements for dinner and stay overnight in Ho Chi Minh City.

Have an early breakfast today; our guide will meet you at 07:00 and take you 100km south to Cai Be floating market for your boat trip in Mekong Delta.

We board a boat and paddle down the vast Mekong River, where vendors at Cai Be sell anything and everything from the wooden decks of their humble boats. We dock at Tan Phong Island in order to take a walking or cycling tour around the idyllic examples of daily Vietnamese life. We pass by fruit orchards, small schools, modest churches and pagodas, and some of the traditional houses where residents create handicrafts, tools and accessories from dried water hyacinth and coconut leaves.

Returning to the boat, we head down smaller watery alleyways that offer many opportunities for quiet relaxation. We cross the majestic Mekong to reach An Binh Island. A manmade canal will carry us to the Ut Trinh Homestay, where we will have lunch with our warm and welcoming host. Unwind in the gorgeous grounds of the homestay with a cup of tea to the sounds of peaceful traditional music.

The nearby village contains many workshops where the locals contribute to the Mekong Delta’s most productive trades – rice and coconut. We will see examples of coconut candy, rice paper, coconut leaf accessories, rice popcorn and many other inventive uses for the versatile foods. After this, we head to the large brick kilns where clay is fired to create wonderful pottery, used for anything from housing houseplants to making soy sauce.

Re-board the boat for one final cruise to Vinh Long city, where we will be transferred to Can Tho city. Check into your hotel and explore Can Tho’s wonderful food scene for dinner.

Make your own arrangements for dinner and stay overnight in Can Tho.

We rise early for breakfast and an unmissable experience at Cai Rang floating market. Even by 6am, the market is in full swing as vendors float solitarily or in groups, displaying to potential buyers the fruit, vegetables, clothing, motorbike parts, old camera equipment and anything else they have managed to acquire. We will float gently along the verdant banks of the Mekong, keeping an eye out for great deals and the excellent floating kitchens where delicious meals and snacks are made and sold. 

We continue on our boat through shaded backwaters - very romantic tunnels of water lying beneath overhanging nipa palm and coconut trees on the banks either side of us. After a serene cruise, we return to village of Cai Rang and take the drive back to Ho Chi Minh City, where you will have your final day in the southern capital of Vietnam.

Make your own arrangements for lunch and dinner and stay overnight in Ho Chi Minh City.

Take breakfast in your hotel and await your transfer to the airport, in order to catch your flight to Pakse, Laos. Once landed, your new local guide will collect you and take you to the Bolaven Plateau, famous for both its cooler temperatures and stunning scenery comprised of mountains and waterfalls. 

In this place, high above the Mekong Valley, we visit a tea plantation and the beautiful Tad Fane Waterfall, with two chutes of water cascading down 120m. We visit a humble coffee plantation after this, eventually arriving at our accommodation at the stunning Sinouk Coffee Resort, where we will have dinner.

Make your own arrangements for lunch. Stay overnight at the Sinouk Coffee Resort.

Have a leisurely breakfast this morning; at 09:00, we meet our Jeep tour expert and discuss the day’s events over coffee. We climb into the Jeep after this and take the half hour drive to the Tad Moun Waterfalls, where the wider river and gently tumbling falls provide the perfect conditions for a cooling swim.

At about 11:00, we continue onto Mr. Khamsone’s coffee farm along paths flanked with lush greenery and resplendent views of distant mountains. Arriving at the farm, we are greeted by our friendly host and given a demonstration on coffee production in the Bolaven Plateau. After an informative tour, we try the many different types of coffee grown here under the care of Mr. Khamsone.

A scenic picnic lunch will follow before we walk to a neighbouring cave, where villagers hid from bombers, tanks and foot soldiers during the Laotian Civil War. We continue our walk around the farm and its surroundings, spotting views of the magnificent Phou Sanark Volcano and relaxing in the truly tranquil setting as the sun descends over the hilltop villages.

We head back to the farm to join Mr. Khamsone’s wife in preparing for dinner. This is a great chance to learn from our friendly hosts about Laotian food as well as the demands of living high in the plateau. Our accommodation will be a comfortable tent under the stars on the beautiful coffee farm.

Stay overnight on Mr. Khamsone’s family-run coffee farm.

Enjoy breakfast and rendezvous with the guide at 09:00. We take the Jeep for 1hr to a remote village called B Setkhord, home to one of Laos’ many ethnic minorities, the Laven people. We will take a tour of the village and meet members of the colourfully clad Laven tribe, who will share with us their customs and traditions. Surviving through fights for Laotian independence against France, as well as the Laotian Civil War, this village has many stories to tell.

We continue our Jeep ride to a nearby waterfall, which provides the perfect setting for a gorgeous picnic lunch. After this, we take the high-altitude roads to a local commune called B Darisa, where the Suay hill tribe lives. Here we will find many examples of beautiful houses built of wood and bamboo, with roofs thatched from straw and coconut leaves in the traditional, ancient way.

We have the afternoon to relax in this peaceful and hidden village, learning more about our Suay hosts and absorbing the attractive atmosphere of a simple life where family connections are cherished above all else. We will stay at a homestay in a very tranquil setting tonight.

Make your own arrangements for dinner and stay overnight at B Darisa.

Have a local breakfast in the village before setting off to a lively market attended by multiple hill tribes in the region of Tha Teng. We will make brief stops at the villages of Ban Bong Neua and Ban Kokphung, homes to the Alak and Katu tribes respectively, on our way to Tad Phaxuam Waterfall. We will have a while to relax here by the multiple trickles of water, or the combined cascade of water caused by heavy rain. We leave the Bolaven Plateau after this and arrive at the town of Champasak in time for lunch.

In the afternoon, we visit Wat Phou, an ancient Khmer religious complex dating back to the 5th Century. This temple predates even Angkor Wat in terms of religious buildings built by the Khmer, and was constructed in a similar vein to honour the Hindu god of Shiva. Wat Phou’s political influences in the past gave it high significance in the Khmer Kingdom, and it is still widely revered to this day by the now-Buddhist population of Laos, though its sandstone structures have eroded considerably over time.

After a good amount of time here, we finish at Champasak town to discover the French architectural influence in the centre of the province.

Make your own arrangements for dinner and stay overnight in Champasak town.

We begin the day with breakfast and by driving into Laos’s deep south, where Khone Island stands resolutely in the Mekong River. We board a long tail boat and cross the gorgeous river to Khone Island, heading first to Ban Khone, a village soaked in French colonial history through its many stately buildings and the remains of its railway system.  

We jump into a tuk-tuk and discover the 4000 Islands, named for the natural occurrence of thousands of small islets unveiling themselves as the Mekong’s water recedes over the dry season. We head to Liphi Waterfall, an inclined cascade of rapids running between and over jagged rocks, named locally as the ‘Corridor of the Devil’. We will keep an eye out for the rare and beautiful Irrawaddy dolphin, which is sometimes seen jumping clean out of the Mekong River.

The rest of the day will be spent in beautiful surroundings on Khone Island. You are free to do as you wish, but we recommend taking a cycle around to enjoy the tropical scenes, or simply finding a spot on the luxuriant banks to watch a vivid red sunset descend over the Mekong.

Make your own arrangements for dinner and stay overnight on Khone Island.

Enjoy breakfast and take the boat back to the mainland, where we will disembark at Ban Nakasang and continue southwards to Khone Phapheng, one of the most naturally abundant areas in Laos. This is the largest waterfall in Southeast Asia if measured by volume, and its consistent, gushing water is an awe-inspiring site. We stop here, just a few miles from the border with Cambodia, to enjoy a vibrant and wonderfully unhampered ecosystem.

A long-tail boat will take us back to Ban Nakasang and then a car will return us to Pakse. The Se Don and Mekong rivers account for much of the wonderful greenery of Pakse and its surrounding area, making it a fruitful and worthwhile capital of Champasak Province,

Check into your final hotel and make your own arrangements for lunch. Our guide will meet you in the early afternoon for a tour of Pakse, starting at Wat Chomphet, where you will find the largest statue of the sitting Buddha throughout the country. Later, we take the climb to the top of Wat Phou Salao, where you can join the multiple golden statues of Buddha watching over the town below and admiring the river and the soft hills that surround it.

Make your own arrangements for dinner and stay overnight in Pakse.

Relish your final breakfast before our driver conveys you to Pakse International Airport for your onward flight and the end to your South Vietnam to Laos 11 Days tour. It was a pleasure to have you with us and we hope that we have the chance to host you again in the future!

Thank you so much for travelling with us - The reliable local agency in Vietnam.