Laos forum

There was an ATM In Pakse in July 09. Used it twice with no problems. There were no ATMs south of that at the time. I don't know anything about north of that but if in Pakse I would assume at least the capital and luang prabang.
Having said that some people have had problems with the atms there, so for a 2week trip i would just bring baht and american dollars. Some tours had better prices if you paid in dollars than the local currency. Its easy to exchange money there and the rates are fine.
Just change what you need cause you are stuck with it once you leave.

i was in luang prabang and to verify once again, yes there's an ATM there which worked for me (I used visa). the ATM i used allowed withdrawals in multiples of 20,000kip.

many of the money exchanges had the visa/mastercard cash-withdrawal service too. rate was 8000kip to the dollar, on top of the usual 3.1% bank charge. they usually have a withdrawal minimum too though, about 500,000kip if i remember correctly.

haven't checked if i got a better rate withdrawing at the ATM, but i didn't really bother since i seldom needed it, and wasn't taking that much out. even then it looks like the ATM is great since you can withdraw less than 500,000.

For 2 weeks? Just stick some money in your pocket and go!

Use kip once you get there, other currencies are for people that like to pay more, change back at the money change booth on the way out of the country.

Here's a list of towns with ATMs http://www.bcellaos.com/atm_locator.php

But I'd warn, many times they are out of order, overdrawn, or have other problems. I usually consider a town having an ATM to be a little black mark on the desireability meter. A pretty good indicator that the places is becoming pedestrian.

If you're going to Laos from Thailand I'd just grab a stack of thousand baht notes, then change them into kip as you go. Don't enter Laos expecting ATMs to work although they're usually ok. Have seen plenty of miserable people lying around next to disfunctional ATMs unable to continue their travels.