Things to Do in Laos in May

May mornings in Luang Prabang are the quietest you'll experience all year. The tak bat ceremony starts around 5:30am, when the air is still cool enough, around 24°C (75°F), that you can hear the monks' bare feet padding on the asphalt without the crowd noise that drowns it out in peak season. The smell of sticky rice steaming in bamboo baskets mixes with frangipani blossoms and incense from the nearest wat. Wat Xieng Thong's mosaic tree of life on the rear chapel wall catches the early light in a way that's worth setting an alarm for, and the teak-and-gold interior smells like centuries of candle wax and devotion. By 9am the heat starts building, so this is a dawn activity, which happens to be when it's most atmospheric anyway.

Vang Vieng's limestone karst landscape looks its best in May, the mountains have shed their dry-season dustiness and turned deep green, and the Nam Song River is rising just enough to make kayaking interesting without the dangerous currents that come in July and August. But the real advantage is underground. Tham Chang, Tham Phu Kham, and the lesser-visited Tham Nam are naturally cool, stepping from 34°C (93°F) humidity into a cave running at 22°C (72°F) feels like walking into a different country entirely. The stalactites in Tham Phu Kham drip with condensation and the underground pools glow an almost unreal blue-green from calcium deposits, lit by whatever daylight filters in through the entrance. Kayaking the Nam Song in the early morning, before the afternoon storms roll in, gives you the karst towers reflected in glassy water with mist still clinging to the peaks, a scene that's almost impossible to photograph badly.

May is the month to catch Kuang Si at its peak. The first rains of the wet season have begun feeding the cascades, so the flow is stronger than the dry-season trickle of March and April. But the water hasn't yet turned muddy, that happens from late June onward when heavy monsoon rains wash red laterite soil into the watershed. Early-to-mid May gives you this narrow window of strong flow and still-turquoise pools, which is arguably the best the falls look all year. The Asiatic black bears at the rescue sanctuary near the entrance are more active in cooler morning hours, ambling and play-wrestling in their enclosures rather than sleeping through the midday heat. The 30 km (18.6 mile) drive from Luang Prabang passes through villages where you'll see rice paddies being prepared for planting, farmers ankle-deep in mud behind water buffalo, the squelch and splash of work that's been unchanged for centuries, with the sweet green smell of freshly turned wet earth hanging over everything.

The Bolaven Plateau sits at 1,000-1,350 m (3,280-4,430 ft) elevation above Pakse in southern Laos, and in May that altitude difference is the closest thing to natural air conditioning the country offers. While the lowlands suffocate at 34°C (93°F), the plateau runs a noticeably cooler 25-28°C (77-82°F) with enough breeze to dry the sweat on your neck. The early rains transform the plateau's waterfalls, Tad Fane, a twin cascade dropping 120 m (394 ft) into a gorge thick with mist and jungle, runs with real force by mid-May. The sound of it reaches you before the viewpoint does. Coffee plantations are between harvest cycles. But the arabica and robusta plants are flowering, filling the air with a sweet, jasmine-like scent that's nothing like the roasted bean, most visitors don't realize coffee flowers smell this good. The ethnic minority villages, Laven, Katu, Suay communities, on the plateau's eastern loop see virtually no tourists in May, and the reception tends to be warmer for it.

Laos's capital doesn't try to impress you, it's the quietest Southeast Asian capital by a wide margin, and in May's low season it's practically meditative. The morning is your window: start at Wat Si Saket, the oldest surviving temple in Vientiane, built in 1818, where 6,840 Buddha images line the cloister walls in niches stacked four high, many of them headless from the 1828 Siamese sacking. The smell of melting candle wax and old teak hangs in the still air. Walk along Lane Xang Avenue to Patuxai, Laos's concrete answer to the Arc de Triomphe, built with cement the Americans originally donated for a runway, and climb to the top for a view of the city's low skyline against the afternoon's gathering storm clouds. By late afternoon, the Mekong riverfront promenade comes alive as locals escape the heat. The sunset over the river, with Thailand's Nong Khai visible on the far bank, turns the water copper and gold, and the food stalls along Fa Ngum Road start firing up charcoal grills. The smoke from ping kai, grilled chicken basted with lemongrass and fish sauce, mixes with the muddy-water smell of the Mekong in a combination that, for whatever reason, is one of those scent memories that stays with you long after you leave.

The two-day slow boat from Huay Xai at the Thai border to Luang Prabang covers roughly 300 km (186 miles) of the upper Mekong, and May is one of the last months where this route runs comfortably before the river swells with monsoon runoff. The water is rising but still manageable, and the banks are transitioning from dry brown to that first flush of green that makes the gorge sections between Pak Beng and Luang Prabang striking. You'll share the wooden boat with a handful of travelers instead of the packed-to-capacity loads of high season. The engine throb becomes background noise within the first hour, and the scenery, sheer karst cliffs draped in jungle, occasional fishing villages accessible only by river, kids waving from sandbanks that'll be underwater in six weeks, develops at a pace that forces you to slow down whether you planned to or not. The overnight stop in Pak Beng is basic but atmospheric: a one-street town clinging to the riverbank where the evening entertainment is a cold Beer Lao and watching the Mekong turn pink at dusk.