Sleepy little Luang Prabang awakens to skyrocketing tourism, a hidden gem no longer
A railway from China, an unlikely film festival and a new generation of entrepreneurs are shaking things up in Luang Prabang, northern Laos
In the year I first visited, 1993, about 30,000 international tourists managed to gain access to reclusive Laos, but only a fraction made the trek along dangerous roads to Luang Prabang, or from northern Thailand, then by ear-busting speedboat five hours down the Mekong River to where it meets the Nam Khan. Now it has an international airport and I’m back for Luang Prabang’s film festival, the unlikeliest of cinematic celebrations, hosted by one of the world’s last communist countries in a city without a single cinema, the last one having closed in the 1980s.
Nonetheless, since 2010, this spunky Sundance of Southeast Asia has screened films from all members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in hotel meeting rooms and school grounds. Covid-19 curtailed festivities, but it relaunched in 2022 as the Blue Chair Film Festival.
Juries in each Southeast Asian nation select films and, at the 2024 edition, more than 60 were shown between December 5 and 9, along with panel discussions. The atmosphere contrasted the country-fair vibe at the primary school, where about 1,000 people on blue plastic chairs munched popcorn and Lao snacks nightly, with a splash of red-carpet glitz on the Mekong, at the opening night gala.
“And all the films and talks were free admission,” says executive director Sean Chadwell.
The festival also provides a boost to tourism, a vital industry in this landlocked nation that has long lagged decades behind the rest of booming Asia. The gap seemed even greater during the previous festival, in 2022, when everyone – shopkeepers, tuk-tuk drivers and tourism officials – bemoaned the lack of tourists.
