Kiet Ngong

Kiet Ngong sits on the edge of the Beung Kiat Ngong wetland inside the Xe Pian protected area, and it has been the main community tourism base in southern Laos for two decades. Above the village, a walk of about an hour brings you to Phou Asa, a flat hilltop ringed by more than a hundred stone columns roughly one and a half metres high, arranged in a rough enclosure. Nobody has established what they were for; the local explanation is a nineteenth-century fortification, and archaeologists have not confirmed it.

What you actually see

• Phou Asa - a hilltop ringed by over a hundred short stone columns, unexplained.
• The wetland - Beung Kiat Ngong, a Ramsar site with a boardwalk and viewing platform.
• The village - a working settlement with a long-running community tourism arrangement.
• The forest edge - dry dipterocarp woodland running back into Xe Pian.

When to go

November to March is dry and cool enough for the walk up. The wetland holds most water and most birds at the end of the wet season around October. April and May are extremely hot on the exposed hilltop.

Honest expectations

The walk to Phou Asa is up a rocky track with no shade and takes about an hour each way. Elephant transport has historically been offered here and is worth thinking through before agreeing to it. Accommodation is homestay standard and the village is small.

Nearby

Xe Pian protected area surrounds the village, and the Four Thousand Islands are south down the Mekong.