Luang Prabang Bus & Train Tickets: Northern or Southern Station

Confirm which bus station your ticket leaves from before you arrange a tuk tuk. The two bus terminals sit on opposite sides of the old town, and a driver who assumes the wrong one costs you 20 to 30 minutes you may not have.

Most travellers now arrive by train from Vientiane or Vang Vieng, at the railway station 11 km out. By road, buses and vans from Vientiane and Vang Vieng use the Southern Bus Station; from northern Thailand they come in over the 4th Friendship Bridge at Huay Xai, and from Hanoi over the Nam Kan or Tây Trang borders.

The two-day slow boat from Huay Xai ties up at a pier outside town. The routes you can book are below.

Luang Prabang is where most Laos itineraries turn, so it helps to know which onward journeys are quick and which are a full day gone.

Two things are worth saying plainly. The train south to Vang Vieng and Vientiane is so much faster than the road that it has effectively replaced the bus on that corridor, with the caveat that the station is about 11 km out of the old town. And Hanoi is a full day, not an evening: the 24-hour figure is the bus, and there is no faster overland option.

Heading to Thailand, the slow boat down the Mekong is the counter-argument to all of this. It is slower than everything and it is the reason many people are in Luang Prabang at all.

Going to Nong Khiaw: check your departure point

Not every Nong Khiaw service leaves from the same place. Public buses use the Northern Bus Station, while some tourist minivans and online transfers leave from Naluang or include a pickup in town, so check the departure point printed on your ticket rather than assuming. Allow more than the advertised minimum, too: recent passengers commonly report around 4 to 4½ hours, with some departures running 30 to 60 minutes late.

Trains north from Luang Prabang run to Boten, the last station in Laos, and the through train to Kunming calls here as well. Boten station is about 4 km from the road border, a shared taxi ride if you are crossing into China by road instead.

Arriving from China on the train? The railway checkpoint at Boten station accepts the eVisa but does not issue visa on arrival, so arrange a Lao visa before you board if you need one. Fares, the booking window and what security takes off you are on Laos train tickets; the crossing itself is on Laos to China.

There is no direct train, but rail works as one long day and a night. Take a morning train south to Vientiane, 1 h 46 m to 2 h 54 m. Vientiane's Laos–China Railway station is 14–15 km north-east of the centre, and trains to Thailand leave from a different station, Khamsavath, about 7 km out, so leave plenty of time to cross town.

The direct sleeper, train 134, leaves Khamsavath at 18:25 and reaches Bangkok's Krung Thep Aphiwat at 07:20 the next morning. You leave Laos at Khamsavath, whose immigration desk closes at 18:30, so aim to be there by mid-afternoon. Fares and berths are on Vientiane to Bangkok. If a night on the train does not appeal, Luang Prabang airport has direct flights to Bangkok.