Besides rice, important local crops are corn, soybeans, fruits, vegetables, cassava (maniok), sugarcane, tobacco, cotton wool, tea and peanuts.

[8] Due to high altitudes there are more variations in temperature during the year and a colder dry season in northern Laos as in the rest of the country.

Noted topography includes river channel, exposed beds, sandbars, sand and gravel bars, islands, rock outcrops, bushland, and braided streams.

Black-bellied Tern Sterna acuticauda, Great Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo, Grey-headed Lapwing V. cinereus, Jerdon's Bushchat Saxicola jerdoni, Plain Martin Riparia paludicola, River Lapwing Vanellus duvaucelii, Small Pratincole Glareola lactea, and Swan Goose Anser cygnoides are some of the recorded avifauna.

[15] The extremely limited accessibility of the mountain villages additionally impedes economic development of rural regions.

This form of agriculture is very labour-intensive and takes up huge areas of land, as soils need a long time until their original productivity is recovered.

Besides rice, other important crops are corn, soybeans, fruits, vegetables, cassava (maniok), sugarcane, tobacco, cotton wool, tea and peanuts.

In cooperation with international organisations, the government is working to increase production intensity proposing a sustainable usage of natural resources.

[14] Livestock breeding, above all of water buffalos, pigs, cattle and chickens, is an important component for the livelihood of rural population.

[14] For the population, the forests are not only source of wood, but also contribute to family incomes providing fruits, herbs and meat.

The support of DED aims to raise the incomes especially of the rural population and small-scale enterprises by tourism and thereby protect natural resources.

Oudomxay disposes of eight hotels and approximately 52 guesthouses.,[20] most of them located in the province capital Muang Xay and the riverine traffic junction Pak Beng.

Saymoungkhoune Rattana Stupa located here has a highly revered Buddha image, which is 400 years old and is reported to have supernatural powers.

It has two passages, one is a stream and the other has fossils and both connect to a large hall which is 100 m long, 30 m wide and of varying height of 30–50 m up to the roof.

[24] The Baci festival was started even before Buddhism made inroads into Laos, as an animist ritual used to celebrate important events and occasions, like births and marriages and also entering the monkhood, departing, returning, beginning a new year, and welcoming or bidding etc.

It a traditional cult festival in which after offering prayers to Buddha, in a formal gathering people tie a white thread (symbolically representing purity) or string on the wrist of their opposites wishing for their well-being, ward off ill luck and bring them good luck.

[26] This practice is linked to the ancient belief that Baci is invoked religiously to synchronise the effects of 32 organs of human body considered as kwan (KWA-ang) or spirits or the “components of the soul.” Its observance to establish as social and family bond to maintain “balance and harmony to the individual and community, is done in its original format in Laos, as a substantiation of human existence.”[25][27]