For our January 2020 visit, we arrived in Luang Prabang at a small pier on the Mekong River via a 2-night “Shompoo Cruise” from Huay Xai. Our last two stops on the river were visits to the Pak Ou Caves and “The Whiskey Village”, two sites we had visited on a day trip out of Luang Prabang on our very first visit to the city.
From there it was a short ride on to Luang Prabang where our boat docked not-to-far from our old favorite hotel and our base for the next week, Chitdara 2.
Almost immediately we spotted one of the iconic sights that is part of the charm of this beautiful little city: young monks in saffron collored robes casually walking down the street.
Checking in at the Chitdara 2 felt like we had returned to our home. Mr. Xia gave us a warm greeting at the front desk and sped us through the check-in process with little formality and helped us with our bags getting up the stairway to our favorite room #4.
We had an easy no fuss dinner that night at Tamnack Lao, a very reliable restaurant no more than a 5-minute walk from the hotel.
For additional detail on all restaurants and a couple visits to Club Ikon, our favorite bar in Luang Prabang, see our Luang Prabang Restaurants 2020 page.
On the way back to the hotel M.A. stopped in at the Ock Pop Tok Heritage Shop on the main road next to 3 Nagas Restaurant and registered for her textiles workshop to begin 2-days later.
On our first morning in LP we found our way to Hibiscus Spa for a coffee + goat milk + honey scrub for M.A. and a Lao massage for me. Total bill was $23 USD combined (for two 90-minute treatments). A little shopping and lunch at Saffron followed by an afternoon nap and then dinner at the newest local top flight restaurant Paste made for a perfect first day.
M.A. started her weaving workshop the next morning and renewed old friendships with the staff and management of the Ock Pop Tok Living Craft Centre while making some new friends among other travelers attending workshops.
The next day, M.A. was back for day 2 of her Ock Pop Tok workshop and I found my way to the Lon Wood workshop booked through Backstreet Academy for my class carving a wooden bowl. This was actually my second visit to Mr. Lon’s workshop with the first being in 2016.
Mr. Lon takes you on the full bowl making journey starting with a flat piece of wood and taking it all the way to a completed bowl. While he is ready to clean up mistakes and to move the process along when it gets bogged down, there were plenty of opportunities for hands on experience and I was quite pleased with the end result.
Dinner that night at Tamarind, one of our favorite restaurants in town was great. See 2020 Restaurants for details.
At about this point we were hitting our Luang Prabang stride: Another day another lovely breakfast on the patio overlooking the Mekong River and another Hibiscus Lao massage for me and day 3 of her weaving workshop for M.A. ₭8500 kip for a decent 90 minute massage (or less than $10 USD) is hard to beat.
After my massage I grabbed the free shuttle from the in-town OPT Heritage Shop out to the OPT Crafts Centre for lunch with M.A. at Silk Road Café and her new French friend Audrey, who had written to SE-AsiaTravel.com asking questions about weaving workshops in Southeast Asia.
Turns out she took our advice and booked at Ock Pop Tok and was coincidentally taking the workshop at the same time we were in the city and M.A. was taking her masters class in the same workroom.
We made a couple visits to the Icon Klub, our favorite bar in the entire world. You can read details on our 2020 Restaurants page.
When we originally booked our room at Chitdara 2 in late December, the guesthouse was fully booked for the last night of our 7-night stay in Luang Prabang. Rather than change hotels for a single night we decided to make the move a day early giving us 2 nights at the new hotel.
Back in 2013 we had done a hotel crawl looking at more upscale places that you can read about at Luang Prabang Hotels (2013). One of the places we had liked then but didn’t stay in was Villa Santi and that’s where we chose to stay this time. We liked the central location and its warm if slightly worn French Colonial architecture.
Early on the morning of our move, we met Mr Vong for the procession of Monks collecting alms and he offered to entertain us for the day. After breakfast he took us on a long drive out of town to Wat Pha O (วัดผาโอ) where large numbers of novice monks study. We stopped on the way to buy some drinks and snacks to donate to the monks. We enjoyed a brief tour of the campus, witnessed a prayer service and then were blessed by one of the elder monks of the monastery as thanks for our gifts.
On the way back towards tow, we stopped at the Chinese train bridge over the Mekong River that we had passed under on our way into town. During our week in the city there was lots of talk about both the good and the bad that are likely to come along with the railway when it opens.
Over the past couple years, Chinese tourists with the resources and desire to travel have started showing up in Luang Prabang in greater numbers than ever before by way of road trips over improved roads across the shared border. Many in Luang Prabang have some fears that the very things that make it unique and charming are going to change under the pressure of even more tourists arriving by regular train service.
As we approached the city center we made a stop at a good vantage point for the view and then continued south almost all the way to Kuang Si Waterfall to the excellent Carpe Diem restaurant. Details on a great meal in the beautiful setting there are on our 2020 Restaurants page.
After lunch Mr. Vong drove us back to the city center where he dropped us at Villa Santi, our new hotel and then went back to Chitdara 2 to transfer our luggage. What a nice man. Our rather large room was comfortable and located in a relatively newer section that was separated from the original building and gardens by Sathouyaithao Road.
As we walked from our room and emerged onto Sathouyaithao Rd. on way to dinner that evening we saw a small storefront full of textiles almost right in front of us. Looking through the windows we were like moths attracted to light. We had stumbled into Khinthong Lao Silk.
After casually inspecting a few pieces we met Khinthong Xayalath, the owner and a weaver herself. She is originally from Xam Tai, a Tai Daeng weaving village in extreme Northeast Lao that is actually twice as far from Luang Prabang as it is from Hanoi, Vietnam.
Tai Daeng weavers are considered by many to be among the most skilled weavers and natural dyers in all of Asia. The textiles we saw in this shop were (technically) beautifully woven in patterns full of color with both ancient and modern symbolism.
Khinthong and her American husband frequently travel back to her home district buying pieces for her shop and consulting with local weavers from multiple villages on what are popular traditional themes and new modern patterns that buyers are looking for.
The framed piece shown in this photo is an example of a traditional Tai Daeng pattern that is quite different from the typical patterns seen in Luang Prabang and also includes cocoon casings as part of the fringe (which can be seen by clicking on the left slide show arrow of the photo.)
Given that we stayed at Villa Santi over 3-days and we passed right by the shop every time we went to or from our room, we ended up making several visits before deciding on a number of pieces to bring home with us. You won’t find any $10 scarfs in this place but considering the quality of what we saw (and bought) we thought the prices were very reasonable.
On our way to breakfast the next morning we heard a banging sound coming from the side yard of Vat Nong Sikhounmuang a half a block down Sathouyaithao Rd. and wandered over to have a look. Peering over a fence we found one older and three younger monks hitting a large drum.
We went about our day and returned to the hotel hours later and the drum beating was still going on. We found out later that this was a ceremony of purification and renewal of the temple marking a minor holiday on the Lao Buddhist calendar.
On our last full day in LP; one more massage and more shopping as well as a final lunch at Saffron and dinner at Paste.
On our final day in Luang Prabang, we had a late afternoon flight back to Bangkok where we overnighted at Park Nine Hotel – Suvarnabhumi, a nice reasonably priced hotel convenient to the BKK airport, where we began our journey back home.