- Laos
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Nice hotel just outside Luang Prabang in the country. Newly built and well finished. With in-house spa.
www.experiencesoutheastasia.com/hotel_page?hotel_id=92&object=accom
Family run guesthouse, which delivers a lot for very little outlay. We had a double room with en-suite and balcony overlooking the river for about $5/night. We opted for no air con but had overhead fan which was more than enough. White painted walls and dark wood fixtures and fittings, and tiled floors help to keep everything cool. Good comfortable beds and everything was very clean. It's probably a good fifteen minute walk into the centre of Luang Prabang, but it's enjoyable and you get to see things you wouldn't normally!
The bathroom was clean too, although they didn't clean the room or bathroom everyday you only had to ask. However, the shower/water supply was a little tempremental, but with patience and a little tweaking all was fine!
The hosts supplied a free meal once a week, which we managed to have two of! Very friendly atmosphere and the meal gave us the opportunity to meet other travellers who were of all ages and backgrounds. Free fruit and water (safe to drink) for all. Breakfast and evening meals available and there are soft drinks and beer too!
Laundry service available although like any good traveller you can still do a little of your own!
There is a curfew in Luang Prabang which if I remember correctly starts at 11.00pm, so the owners will lock the gates somewhere around then. We were late back one night but they waited up for us.
You get about 4-6 small light planes over everyday, but they don't cause too much disturbance.
Great place to stay, highly recommend it, don't forget to remove your shoes on the way in!
East part of town five minutes walk from Wat Visoun and south from Phousi Hill. Walk down small road/alleyway and Cold River Guesthouse is situated at the bottom on the righthand side. Location is right on the Nam Khan River. Accessible by foot or tuk tuk!
Viengchampa is a tour operator based in Vientiane with links all over the country. They organised a trip I took in southern Laos in September 2008 very efficiently. I only had a few days to spare and wanted to get a reasonable overview of the southern provinces without the hassle of organising it myself and Viengchampa were great. They use local guides who really know the area and all of them spoke good English and were very competent. Everything happened pretty much when they said it would and they were flexible enough to allow stops whenever a place looked interesting. Highly recommended.
We stayed the night in the village of Kong Lor,shared a meal with the villagers and experienced the baci ceremony, a ritual of offerings, prayer and mutual good wishes.
Early next morning we went with the villagers to the local temple, where a solitary monk accepted our alms and rice and blessed us in return. It was peaceful and moving.
We climbed into long, thin motorised canoes for a half-hour journey upstream to one of the most fabulous natural attractions of this delightful country. In the mouth of a cave, the boatmen switched on their head torches and we puttered slowly into darkness, the black water of the river sliding beneath us. In the past, the local people thought the tunnel led into the bowels of the earth – until they noticed ducks appearing from the cave, clearly emanating from an upper rather than a nether-world. Brave men had ventured boldly into the cave, paddling upstream for an astonishing seven kilometres to emerge in a river gorge at the far end.
Half-way along, we stopped at a sandy river beach and scrambled into the caves to peer at the ancient rock formations. At the other end of the tunnel the boatmen dragged the canoes through shallow rapids and light beckoned us into the gorge and soon into farmland. We ate lunch – duck stew – at the village the other side of the cave.
I travelled there with Viengchampa tours, who did a great job throughout my trip in Southern Laos.
The delightful Kingfisher Lodge, near Pakse, is a lovely place. For once, it's an eco-lodge which isn’t just a case of greenwash – they really do everything possible to minimise their carbon footprint, from using low-wattage light-bulbs to installing their own rainwater storage tanks. The lodges look out over flooded paddy fields, with hammocks so you can lie back and enjoy the scenery.
From there, you can take an elephant up Mount Phou Asa, a forested outcrop standing up above the plains where black columns of flat stones are all that’s left of a former temple. After gently swaying up a forested track, we descended from the elephant to explore the smooth rock summit, amongst rain-fed pools and tranquil groves and the temple pillars. Birds flit back and forth and, looking outwards, the plains stretch far into the distance.
The Sala Savanh is a former colonial building pleasantly converted into an atmospheric small hotel, with time-darkened wooden floors and chairs on balconies round the upper-floor rooms. I stayed two nights here in September 2008.
There’s also a surprisingly good choice of restaurants in the town, perhaps a legacy from the French colonial period: we ate at a charming restaurant on the main square one night and on the next at a floating restaurant on the Mekong, outlined in coloured lights and bobbing gently with the swell of the river.
Savannakhet itself is one of the former ports along the mighty Mekong, which flows north to south through Laos. These provincial towns are just emerging from the somnolence of post-colonialism and the economic straitjacket of Communism, and – as with Luang Prabang – retain many of their fine, French-era buildings.
It's a small, boutique style hotel right on the Mekong. The rooms are invididually decorated - very individual in some cases, with the bath/shower right in the bedroom. It has tea and coffee and a fridge, the rooms are spacious, and it's all very comfortable, with free wifi access. It's just a short walk from the centre of town and from lots of riverside cafes.
What a fantastic booklet. It gives so much information about making the most of your holiday and doing something worthwhile.
We did loads of the stuff recommended in it and it helped us meet local people and ensure that our money was going to worthwhile places.
For example: teaching locals to read English (Brother Mouse in Luang Prabang - fantastic place!).
If you fancy a massage, go to the Red Cross in Luang Prabang. It's not luxury - none of your scented candles here - but a great massage and all the money goes to the Red Cross. The brave can even donate blood.
Stay Another Day Laos is available in guesthouses, travel agents, bars, restaurants - all over the place.
Thai cookery - been there done that? Why not try Lao? Different enough from Thai to feel like a real adventure.
Great Lao guys teaching you to cook Lao food! $25 for the day, go to the market in the morning, cook all day then eat what you've prepared (washed down with a Beer - Lao of course!)
I thought it was one of the best value things we did in Laos. We cooked chicken laap (salad), coconut curry and jeow (chilli jam-paste-type thing) which required 50 chillis for a 2-person serving!
And can absolutely agree with the tip about the Tamarind Cafe. We ate the 'beer snacks' there and came back for more pretty quickly! Carolyn was fantastic and really helped with finding a cookery course. They do pretty advanced stuff at their school (and we are amateurs!) so she recommended Three Elephants.
It's advertised all over the place - you can't miss it. If you do, enquire in the Three Elephants Cafe or Tamarind cafe. Have some beer snacks while you're there!
Laos is a mountainous and landlocked country located in the centre of Indochina. It has common borders with China, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Laos is 236,800 sq. km in land area, the major part being mountainous and forested. Geographically, the country is divided into three areas: the North, the Central and the Southern parts.
Laos is an adventurer’s paradise, offering treks to off the beaten track destinations that few tourists get to. It’s a country that receives relatively few visitors and that is one reason why it is so special and why we love it.
The kingdom of Lan Xang (Laos) was founded in the mid-14th century and ruled by Buddhist Thai. At the northern capital, Luang Prabang, the influence of the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai predominated; in the southern capital, Vientiane, a mixture of Ayutthaya and Khmer motives prevailed.
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Jeow Bong is a smoky chilli and garlic paste traditionally made with buffalo hide. But Tamarind cafe - brilliant place - make a non-meat version which you can bring back to the UK without lawbreaking.
I just wish that I'd carried more jars of it home.
Pork candyfloss sounds vile, but is good. It's actually quite like a fluffy biltong. You can't ship it home so eat up while you're in Laos.
Tamarind will also organise morning trips to the market to look at the amazing variety of fruit and vegetables and also be grossed out by pig skin masks at the butchers.
Carolyn (who jointly runs Tamarind with her boyfriend Joy) is a fount of food knowledge.
Ban Wat Nong, Luang Prabang
We found it tricky to exchange money whilst we were in Laos (combination of national holidays, weekends and initially staying out of town). So we ended up having no cash. Stupidly we didn't take a lot of dollars with us.
Wish we had: everywhere takes them and it saves queuing in hot banks.
This is an expensive hotel ($100/night) set up by Thai owners. It is not worth the money.
You are out of town with infrequent bus journeys in and out. They start late so you have to pay extra if you want to see the alms giving or to climb Mount Phousi at dawn.
If you want the map that they show you at check-in you have to pay extra.
The rooms are shabbily furnished and you can hear everything your neighbours are doing.
Service is poor and orientated towards the dozens of Japanese package holidaymakers who dominate the hotel.
While the scenery is absolutely magnificent, there is nothing to do, no gym, no pool. (I think generally Lao are against swimming, so this is probably not surprising.)
The walk into town is over an hour along a main road and not very nice.
We left after a night and regretted spending that long.
www.grandluangprabang.com/
but really, don't bother
Luang Prabang is a town which only seems to cater for backpackers or honeymooners/touring middle-aged Japanese in terms of accommodation. So rooms seem to cost either $6/night or $100/night.
The 3 Nagas is definitely in the $100/night camp but it is worth it, unlike some others. It has been built from scratch in beautiful local wood by two French men and every detail has been thought about.
It is truly lovely and small enough that it remains personal - tour groups were nowhere to be seen. And the breakfast croissants are the best that I have had anywhere! Breakfast and free internet access from their computer are included in the room rate. Staff are friendly and each room has a sitting area (either onto the private garden or the veranda).
We had room 14 which was lovely, but it might be worth asking about the garden rooms as they looked lovely. The hotel is on the main road in Luang Prabang and en route for the monks' alms giving. The only downside, which everywhere in town has, is that you are near the wats. They are beautiful by day, but the chanting starts early and Thai donors supplied one near to us with loudspeakers. Think the record was 3am- 7pm. It may make buddhists serene, but I was not!
Retire-Asia.com has pages of information about the Lao PDR. Visa on arrival (30 days now), banking, ATMs, Vientiane nightlife for tourists, expat life or retirement and more.
One of Vientiane's few clubs (and one of the few places open after 11.30pm). Local bands play a varied, and sometimes quite bizarre, mixture of Thai, Lao and Western pop and rock.
Good place to hang out with the locals and try a bit of Lao dancing!
Open 7pm-midnight.
Piawath Road, Sisatanak District, Vientiane
www.chesscafe.laopdr.com
It's not the cheapest in what is a very cheap town, but it's more of a 3* hotel. The staff are absurdly friendly (the desk clerk drove me to hospital on the back of his moped despite being warned not to by his boss), the rooms large, clean & comfortable with free breakfast.
114 Pangkham Rd
Tel: 021 215 093
This market appears towards the end of the day, along the main street outside the royal palace. It gets really magical at dusk or after dark, as the stall holders have lanterns. It keeps going until about midnight. You can buy handmade textiles and jewellery, amongst other things.
The river tubing is great but be careful because even though the river is not fast or deep, it can still be dangerous.
I almost got dragged under the water by some tree roots and an Irish guy drowned a week after I was there.
Various rivers in Laos
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