Vientiane, Laos Nightlife Trip Report
Hey folks, this is your roving video correspondent, Seeker of the Way, with an update on the naughty nightlife of Vientiane, Laos. Viangchan, as the locals call it, comes across to most travellers as a sleepy regional capital good for only a night or two of R&R on the hippie trail. In fact it has a decent amount of fun on offer for those who investigate further – no trench coat, tipped Fedora or magnifying glass needed. Looking at the history of the place it actually had some of the wildest nightlife in the world during the Vietnam War. Those who follow my YouTube channel know I have spent decades checking out the region & I’ve put out several videos fairly recently featuring Vientiane as it’s a place that is near to my heart.
I’ll let you in on a secret; I met my first girlfriend in the region in a legendary nightspot in Vientiane many years back called Borpennyang. She was working in a kind of grey zone profession, as a singer in a karaoke club (demolished long ago). Like most Westerners when life in these parts are still fairly new I mistakenly tried to apply Western logic to understand where things stood. It’s like trying to put square pegs into round holes, no pun intended. Boom boom, as Basil Brush would say. Searching around the internet I stumbled upon Stickman’s website & with his insights & those of his kind readers who offered written submissions I started to unravel the mysteries of the Orient. I ended up reading every column & readers submission over a few years (yes, even the ones that have subsequently been taken down). There were a number of enlightening fellows who contributed to the Readers Submissions back in the day, & as a way of giving thanks I feel a need to contribute in this age where the art of penmanship has diminished somewhat. By the way, I know a lot of you chaps have special stories to tell so it would be great to have more people write & send them in to our dedicated Stickman.
In a fairly recent nightlife video on Vientiane I featured a special video homage to the legendary Borpennyang bar (essential viewing) which sadly went out of business due to the Covid lockdowns, plus a few other classic spots that have gone. Currently the premises is still vacant & it’s a great business opportunity for anyone who wants to have a beer bar as it has a prime location on a top floor overlooking the Mekong River, epic sunsets included. The customer base would return at the drop of a hat. Check out my social media pages which are linked on my YouTube channel to see a clip I filmed inside the ruins of Borpennyang during my current trip.
The last remaining classic old timer bar, Samlor, is still in full swing, I’m glad to report, & it was as lively as during my previous coverage, perhaps even more so. There were plenty of welcoming smiles there, though I didn’t run into any old friends on this trip unfortunately.
A very big piece of news is that the best disco in Vientiane, @Home, a place to meet friendly locals which I mentioned in my recent video coverage had closed down, has been rebranded & just re-opened in the same location under the new name of Paradise Club. It looks fantastic, with the same layout, but the plush fittings are a big improvement. It will take a few weeks for word to get around & numbers to pick up, but there were some pretty friendly faces to be found.
CCC Bar is still ticking over. It’s a smaller old style place where a mixed bag of sorts hang out or pass through, including a few freelancers, regular folks, & some of the local lads who like other lads. It’s not a bad spot for a quick beer while heading between other spots.
What used to be a dirt track at the end of the riverside road downtown has in recent years been paved to extend said road out to the edge of the city. This is a great improvement, & has in effect created a new nightlife zone with a handful of riverside bars & restaurants there, the best probably being Ohlala Bar – which has a bit of the old Borpennyang vibe, if less so. There were a few well-presented friendly girls on the prowl. There were also a few of uncertain gender who could probably tell you stories of going up the dirt track there back in the day. Be sure your beer drinking spectacles don’t get too fogged up.
Some of my long-time local ex-pat contacts had informed me of a few discos that had popped up that weren’t known to me previously. In the last decade or so discos, at first one or two, then gradually more, have come & gone in Vientiane but become embedded as an important part of the local nightlife scene. One of the main components of my current mission was to check out these currently happening spots. The aforementioned Paradise Club has to be the pick of the litter, but here’s a rundown of the rest.
A little further out from the centre, just passed Paradise Club, is Marina Night Club. It’s a well-appointed spot & well worth checking out. It’s certainly a favorite for the local pretty things. On the other side of the city centre is Club DPlus, & I think my revue would have to award the same score to it as the pricing seemed rather suspect according to several people I ran into who were heading out so I decided to not hang around there & just had a peek. The vibe really didn’t jive with me. Further out in that direction towards the south side of town is Phoenix Night Club, which had no other foreigners but I was made very welcome there by some smiley local lovelies. It’s definitely a hot tip.
There were some other interesting places, lo-so to hi-so, which are more local style which I won’t mention here as most foreigners would probably not be welcome or have possible hassles for not understanding local ways. But for the deep divers, I will be setting up a Patreon for the Seeker of the Way YouTube channel soon, which will feature exclusive content & I also offer coaching / guides, so get in touch if interested. I really appreciate the support. It’s difficult to cover such material & avoid censorship despite reporting in a journalistic way, not advocating anything, & avoiding direct vocabulary, yet some videos have been demonetized by the platform despite not infringing the rules. Interestingly the platform still makes money from ads on those same videos & large channels get away with all kinds of things. We’ll continue to tell it like it is, if indirectly, & see how it goes, as did those before my time who helped me out along the way.
Here’s the link to the Vientiane nightlife video I mentioned.
Be sure to check out the other nightlife videos on the channel also, & you’ll find that most of the day time videos actually mention bits of local nightlife in the various places featured as well since not all places are big enough to support the amount of nightlife needed to create a full episode around it.
Seeker of the Way
