Manifa Travel Luang Prabang Office — Attraction in Luang Prabang

4.5 rounded up. We booked directly at their office so we were able to get a good understanding between the various tour options. We selected the standard boat ride in the morning (around 9am) to the Pak Ou caves and the waterfall in the afternoon to cover the main attractions around Luang Prabang.

If you’ve never been on a tour in SE Asia, the hotel pickups is an ordeal. Unfortunately, we were the first pickup and so we had to ride around and wait for other people to get into the van. It was 45 min before we were on the boat (we could have walked there faster). Even though it was mid October & hot, the boat ride was refreshing. We stopped for about 20min at the whiskey making village to sample the rice whiskey. It’s was a relaxing ride up. We had plenty of time at the upper and lower Pak Ou caves (217 steps, 7-8 min walk up). Then it was a short ride up the Pak river to see the limestone cliffs. We got to the elephant camp shortly after 12 noon for a leisurely lunch. There is an elephant with her mahout for you to feed and pet. We left around 1:50pm for the Kaung Xi waterfalls with a short stop back at the whiskey village for 2 people who had done kayaking in the morning and joining us for the afternoon. A 20min cultural stop at the Hmong relocation village. With the parking, electric cart ride, we arrived at the waterfall at 4pm. The guide took us to the main waterfall (600 m, 20 min with the crowds). It got a little fuzzy if we could get to the upper waterfall (570+steps?) and back in time. So although we didn’t do it, we could have in the time given. We arrived back in town around 6:30pm. We were concerned about the long hotel drop off ordeal so we jumped off first at the night market.

Thin, our tour guide was informative without overloading us with information. He also engaged one on one with everyone. He was very accessible.

There was plenty of instant coffee and tea and cold water on the boat, along with some fried banana chips. The van drink had cold water for us in the afternoon.

The lunch was good with a variety for everyone including vegetarians.

We had a good experience and highly suggest going into their office to speak and book...

If you want to have a good time with the elephants or other activities in nice cottages with a pool or just a day trip kayaking, biking with the family, with very good service, don’t listen to the bad reviews here. Most of them have never even been to the place and just left a bad review to hurt someone’s business without even trying it. If you do a day trip they take you to their farm/cottages for an amazing buffet lunch where they provide you beer or drinks if you want. One of the elephants comes out to eat some bananas and sugar cane and you can feed it and take pictures with it. There is someone taking care of the elephant the whole time (doesn’t use any kind of weapon other than his words to control him). The elephant is NOT in chains and he seems very peaceful and playful. The elephants weigh around 3500-4000kg and eats around 300-400kg of food a day. IF you want to do the riding (which is completely optional) you can. The riding lasts less than 30 min and you go in the river with the elephant to give him a bath. Some of them are very playful and will even spray you with water. 2 person weigh around 150-180kg so that’s around 5% of the elephant’s body weight. It’s like a human of 70kg carrying a 3.5kg backpack. We can all do it all day no problem, even hiking with it. The elephants do this for 1-2 hours max a day, most of them only do it for 30 min. Like the owner explained in one of the reviews : the riding is like an exercise for them, otherwise they will just stay all day eating and that’s not healthy. These people making these bad comments have no idea about the real world: the elephants that stay in the wild are poached and mistreated by hunters. Of course there are many elephant farms that mistreat them too, but Manifa doesn’t seem to be...

My husband and I had a great experience with this company. We stayed overnight in the cottage and it was one of the nicest stays we’ve stayed in for several months. From the towels, to the bed and blankets and all the cute touches in the cottage. It would have been nice to stay another night just to relax and enjoy the place. The food portions for every meal were more than enough and more was always offered. Drinks were brought to our room whenever requested. We did a bunch of activities and all were very well organized and thought out. We never felted rushed. Drinks and snacks were always provided. All of the staff that we encountered spoke English. There are elephants here and activities with the elephants. I’m a huge animal lover and have seen a lot of sad things travelling SEA but I didn’t get that feeling with this place. The elephants appear to be well cared for in that we saw kilos and kilos of food for them and when doing activities with the elephants the guides never became aggressive with the elephants or physical. They never appeared angry or impatient with them. They spoke loudly when stating commands, however I felt that was justified given their size. Given the state of the world and how animals like elephants are continually killed, this environment is at least safe for them from evil people. There’s an option to walk or ride the elephant. This walk is quite short and takes them to the river which they like. They are not being walked/ridden all day long. My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed our time here and would recommend it to anyone looking for a quiet cottage experience with some special elephant...