Vientiane, the Bolaven Plateau & the 4,000 Islands, 5 Nights

You are met on arrival in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and driven to your hotel. After a rest the afternoon is free to look around the city on your own. No meals are included today.

A full day in the capital. The morning covers Haw Phra Kaew, Wat Sisaket, Pha That Luang, the golden stupa that is Laos's most important religious monument, and Patuxai, the victory arch with a view over the city from the top. In the afternoon you drive out to Buddha Park, a riverside field of Buddhist and Hindu concrete statues that includes a reclining Buddha 40 metres long, and visit the COPE visitor centre, which explains the prosthetic and rehabilitation work done for people injured by unexploded ordnance. You are driven back to your hotel. Meals included today: breakfast.

In the morning you fly to Pakse; the flight is not part of the package and is quoted separately. You are met on arrival and driven up to the Bolaven Plateau, by way of Salavan province, with a tea stop on the road. The plateau is cooler than the plain, and its rivers fall off the edges into forest: you stop at Tad Fane and Tad Yuang waterfalls and see how coffee, tea, cardamom and bananas are grown. The route also passes villages of the plateau's ethnic minorities. You stay overnight on the plateau. Meals included today: breakfast.

After breakfast you visit Tad Pha Suam waterfall and the traditional houses of several ethnic groups gathered beside it. You then drive to Wat Phou, a UNESCO-listed pre-Angkorian temple set on the slope below Mount Phu Kao, with origins in the fifth century. The route continues past Wat Oum Muang and Phou Asa to Don Khong, the largest island in the stretch of the Mekong known as the 4,000 Islands. You walk to the hotel, cycle around the island and its colonial-era buildings, and watch the sunset over the river. Meals included today: breakfast.

After breakfast you take a boat down the Mekong to Don Khone. On Don Khone and neighbouring Don Det you see village life, the old French buildings and locomotive left from the colonial railway, and the Li Phi rapids, known as the Devil's Corridor, getting around by tuk-tuk or bicycle. The boat then returns you to the mainland at the fishing village of Ban Nakasang, where your driver is waiting, and you drive south to Khone Phapheng, near the Cambodian border, the largest waterfall in South-East Asia by volume. From there you drive back to Pakse for the night. Meals included today: breakfast.

After breakfast your guide takes you up to the viewpoint at Wat Phou Salao, which looks across the Mekong to Pakse, and through the town's market. You are then driven to Pakse airport, where the package services end. Meals included today: breakfast.