Laos vehicles drive on the right and have a strong shade of yellow for their license plates. Some cars will have white plates. The Laos landscape is in general tropical and resembles its neighbouring countries. Parts of Laos have a strong, reddish dirt that is visible even in the urban areas. The Laos language looks similar to Thai, with small circles on the ends of letters. In contrast, Laos has curves almost all over each characters whilst Thai has straight components on almost all characters. The cars in Laos drive on the right hand side of the road. This is mostly useful to distinguish between Thailand, which drives on the left hand side of the road. Although Laos’ urban areas are flat, there are often visible hills or mountains in the background. Parts of Laos often have striped curbs. A common style of utility pole in Laos is a asymmetric type. Two ‘pine cones’ are on one side and one on the other. Many Laos utility poles also have small holes in them, much like the Thai utility poles. Stop signs in Laos feature the Laos script plus the English word ‘STOP’.



Luang Prabang has historical architecture, hills and palms.

Vang Vieng instead fetures distinct mountains.

Vientiane is a large city.

Savannakhet is mostly flat.

In Pakse you can see red soil, arid and hills.


Laotian licence plates are short and yellow. This distinguishes them from nearby Thailand and Cambodia, who both use white plates on non-commercial vehicles.

Laotian commercial plates are white, and government plates are blue.

Thailand uses yellow plates for commercial vehicles, such as taxis.

Lao script is compact and curvy, with some diacritics on top and below characters.

It is very similar to Thai script, but (in most fonts) Lao script has fewer straight lines.

Laos is a majority Buddhist country. Buddhist temples are a common sight. They can be recognized by their ornate decorations, often with gold leaf detailing. 

Thailand and Cambodia are also majority Buddhist.

Striped curbs of various colours, such as red, yellow, or black with white, can be seen throughout Laos.

Stop signs feature the Lao script. Sometimes, the sign features the word ‘stop’ in Latin script below the Lao script.

In Laos, stop signs only have 2 characters, compared to 3 in Thailand.

Laos uses square concrete poles, with small pinholes on the sides in a row from top to bottom. 

Similar poles are found in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and less commonly, Cambodia.

Laos uses square concrete black and white bollards with one or more black bands.

Thailand, Indonesia, and rarely Cambodia use similar bollards.

Some lamp posts have diagonal red and white striped markings that do not go down to the base.

A red and white painted cuboid concrete bollard can sometimes be seen a few metres off the side of the road.

Laos has a communist government and therefore you can sometimes see red hammer and sickle flags.