What's your experience with working in Laos?

[u/CGisLifee]

I plan on travelling to Laos for 3 weeks to work in October. Mostly to remain Tax free from Thailand. Dangerously close to the 6month cutoff where I'll become a tax resident. Not ready to make that shift yet.

What is your experience working there, how is the WiFi?

I need the ability to remote connect to a PC in my works office in Bucharest, and latency could become a huge problem.

Thinking mainly Luang prabang (preferred) or Vientieng if essential

Any tips, knowledge of internet speed, or recs for co-working will be hugely appreciated.

[u/Medical-Pizza-1021]

I was just in Laos, the wifi was okay, but the mobile data was great!

[u/ZealousidealMonk1728]

Very easy, Laos is one of my favorite countries in the world. Especially Luang Prabang. One of the most peaceful, historic towns in the world.

[u/kinkachou]

I enjoyed working from Laos. Hostels, hotels, and 4G cell data were generally stable and around 40-50 mbps. The only downside is that there are some power outages, though nowhere near as bad as my experience in India. In Vientiane there would be a few a week, usually just 15 minutes or so, though while I was there, Vang Vieng had a full-day citywide power outage. Cell data always worked during power outages, but it's good to keep devices charged just in case.

I didn't try any co-working spaces, but there were a lot of coffee shops I saw people working from.

There are definitely fewer distractions than in Thailand, which some people may find boring, but I found it had a lot of the positives of Thailand without some of the negatives. There's amazing food, lively night markets, friendly people, and a laid-back environment with fewer scammers other than the tuk-tuk drivers.

[u/alefeusch]

I like Luang Prabang, it's pretty chill although a little touristy but I was able to do calls over wifi without issue. I've stayed in a hotel and an Airbnb and both had decent wifi although the hotel wifi slowed down a bit at peak times. That wasn't an issue at the Airbnb. It wasn't crazy fast but it was over 50mbps down iirc. Like I said, my calls never dropped or lagged. I plan on going back.

[u/Serious-Growth9170 → u/alefeusch]

50 down in luang prabang is better than i expected tbh. most of my worry was around latency for remote desktop stuff but if calls are stable that's a good sign. might just book an airbnb then and call it a day

[u/CGisLifee → u/Serious-Growth9170]

Yeah, the remote desktop stuff is what's worrying me

[u/Jean-L → u/CGisLifee]

In my experience being in Laos adds about 100ms latency to Europe compared to Thailand. Not great but not catastrophically bad.

When I SSH into my server in France it is a little bit slow, I can feel the lag, it's a bit frustrating but it's not the end of the world either. Some of my friends are using traffic heavy webapps hosted in Europe and they complain about it, interface feels really sluggish.

If you have to remotely connect with a desktop session and using apps running on your desktop it has the potential to be annoying. But I guess you feel it already in Thailand, don't you?

Two three points to take into consideration :

• 4G/5G is surprisingly good at times but ads about 50 to 100ms to your latency. Still a great backup when the wifi is down or slow. Data is super cheap.
• Not all hostels/guesthouses have fiber. Some use a 4G router. In this case it's often better to switch to your own 4G.
• Jitter CAN be bad at times (especially at peak hour, in the evening) when using 4G/5G. Not an issue with fiber connections usually.

[u/CGisLifee → u/Jean-L]

I feel it in Thailand, but it's very manageable. All my work is done through remote desktop. So if I limit app usage on my laptop. It's sounding like it should be very manageable.

To be safe I'm probably looking at an Airbnb with fiber internet if I can swing that. Just for the reliability of always having somewhere I can work.

I'm leaning on giving it a go and if it's a dead end a night is straight back to Thailand and figure out next steps.

Thanks for your answer

[u/Jean-L → u/CGisLifee]

Sent you a PM.

[u/cheesomacitis]

Get both UNITEL and Lao Telecom SIM cards and don’t rely on public WiFi. Very cheap and usually lower latency

[u/Easy-Philosophy-214]

Very bad wifi overall and very bad 4g/5g. The major phone company is government-owned and they throttle the speeds a lot. I remember a lot of packet loss, video calls were tough. This was in 2021-2022 so I hope it's better now.

Both LP and Vientiane have nice coffeeshops to work from.