Laos has taken third place in the Wanderlust Reader Travel Awards 2020 by British travel magazine Wanderlust that covers adventure, cultural and special interest travel.
Each year in October and November the magazine asks its readers to rate their travels of the past year. The awards reach an audience of around half a million responsive and curious travelers and have been established for over 15 years, according to the magazine.
Laos scored 96.25 percent of satisfaction rates, winning the bronze medal in the awards.
“Lovely Laos rounds out the top three. Probably because it sums up laid-back South-East Asia just right,” the magazine said.
“Laos is smiley, scenic, good value and offers delicious cuisine, with a pleasing amount of characterful hotels and modern comforts. Not so much that it’s lost its charm and soul, though. Long may that last,” it added.
Namibia topped the awards with 96.47 percent of satisfaction rates, followed by Peru with 96.33 percent.
Elsewhere in Asia, Japan came 5th with 95.63 percent, Vietnam in 9th with 94.49 percent and India in 10th with 93.33 percent.
In December last year, Laos’s Luang Prabang ranked 11th in a list of top 20 places to travel in 2020, published by Architectural Digest. In the same month, Laos’s Kuang Si Falls in Lung Prabang ranked 26th in the list of 50 most popular destinations for Japanese tourists in 2019 compiled by TripAdvisor Japan, marking the first time for a tourist site in Laos to make the list.
Separately, in October last year, Booking.com Japan named Vientiane as the best city for walking tours in Southeast Asia where tourists could explore the city on foot day and night.
At that time, the website said tourists could walk down streets lined with French colonial-style buildings and visit historic sites and monuments such as Pha That Luang.
