Maylyn’s Guesthouse

Week 80

Day 560

Luang Prabang, Laos

19.8833° N, 102.1333° E

I don’t often feature the places we stay.

Tom and I definitely travel on the budget side.  Even as our budget has increased, we normally don’t increase the expense we pay for accommodations (we prefer to use the money on bomb experiences such as Hot Air Balloon Rides, Jungle Tours, and Caves.)

We always spring for a private room.  If we can, we opt for ensuite.  Air con is negotiable.  Between those criteria and our desire to get the least expensive by those standards I will admit that doesn’t leave a lot of room to sing praises of a place.  It’s always good enough, we’ve had some places we really liked such as:

Warung Coco in Kuta Bali.

It’s crazy how many places we’ve slept that I can’t even remember anymore.  But anyways, a place I know we’ll never forget is Maylyn’s Guesthouse.

I heard about Maylyn’s from This American Girl’s post on Vang Vieng.  I think her post also does an excellent job depicting the beauty that is this town.  Every other blog I read basically focuses on the river floating that’s made it famous and while we did have to float ourselves, I can’t believe I didn’t see pictures of the beautiful Karst Cliffs that line the river.

It’s owned by an Irish guy names Wishy, who goes out of his way to make sure you have a good stay. He is often seen around the restaurant chatting with guests.

Maylyn doesn’t take reservations and their rooms go fast.  When we arrived she had 3 beds left.  Preferring a private room for our first night, we opted out, but were back the next morning and reserved the bungalow that would be our home for the next few days.

Rooms run from 60,000 Kip for a dorm bed to 100,000 Kip for a private, hot water, w/ fan bungalow.  ($7.5-$13)

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Did I mention the bungalows have a view???

As you can probably tell we opted for a bungalow!  Our bungalow not only had a private patio with a gorgeous view but came with two little kitten friends who kept us company the rest of our stay.

The one downside is Maylyn’s Wifi was down the entire time we were here, but if you invest $33 into a  Wifi Unitel dongle and month long unlimited WiFi plan, you can sit on your patio and conduct business as normal with a gorgeous view.  Apparently according to other reviews, Maylyn’s often has great Wifi but this wasn’t the case for us.

Walking through the property was like walking into the book, the Secret Garden once it’s come alive again!  The pathways are full of brightly colored flowers and tropical bushes.  Occasionally you might catch site of  crazy red lizard before they go back into hiding.

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It was the perfect place to lay down my yoga mat and muck around.

Tom on the other hand had an amazing office view for a couple of days.  It was definitely a great place for him to get some writing in and waking up for 5am calls are much better when you can watch the sunrise over the mountains.

Vang Vieng may be a party town (we’ll touch on that soon!), but staying at Maylyn’s provided a quiet river town holiday for us..