Sakura Wood House — Hotel in Luang Prabang

Arrived late afternoon, first impressions, reception area looked messy, junk just left lying around, our room was on the ground floor and needed to walk through another public area a large room which was also full of junk, old double mattress pilled on top of junk, single bed base and old TV monitors looked messy. Along with a filthy red carpet.The room was basic and unfortunately no attention to detail. No kettle or way of boiling water, a tiny working surface to put your things on, the beds were rock hard and we never slept the first night, I spent most of the night on the hotel porch while the young man on evening reception duty was asleep on probably the softest sofa in the building and if he hadn't been on it, that's where they would have found me in the morning. There was no water to make a cup of tea or coffee. The only time you could get tea or coffee was at breakfast 7.30 till maybe 10.30, breakfast included was a croissant the Chinese owner bought with her when she arrived just before 7.30. There was some Jam and butter but not a knife to put it on with. Paper cups to put your coffee in. Only four chairs on the breakfast porch and two small tables for 8/10 rooms. We stayed for 4 nights and after the first night I had to raid the hotel cupboards myself to find some thick blankets to pad the beds with, I raided the kitchen area and found two mugs which we kept for the four days while there, we bought our own knifes to spread some jam but the breakfasts for some guests ran out and was not topped up, we bought our own coffee, sugar and creamer for the mornings as the all in one coffee sachets were not nice. On our third and forth morning croissants turned into two slices of bread. If we hadn't helped ourselves we could not have stayed after the first night, I'm 52 and friend is 64 years old.The floors are filthy and it's a joke to have to take your shoes off in this place, my footwear was cleaner than their floors. The fan cover in the toilet fell off during the night with a loud crash and woke as with a shock.Showers were hot which is the only good thing I could say about the Hotel/Guesthouse. The cleaner a Laotion lady was very sweet.I would not recommend this hotel unless your prepared for a hard bed and to fend for yourself. Shame as it really would not take alot to turn this place around and make it a lovely place to stay. Buy some bed toppers to soften all the beds.Clear all the junk from public areas and use the room off the reception area for a comfortable place to sit and eat breakfast. Get rid of the red carpet.Boiling water 24hrs with tea and coffee creamer and sugar.A shelf or more surface area in the rooms to put things down would be great along with some hooks to hang your towels or jumpers which are needed in the mornings and late evening.Google reviews are everything for businesses these days which they don't...

Overall our stay was good. The room and facilities were nice with all the things that you’d expect (Aircon, fan, piping hot shower, clean room everyday etc). Breakfast was slightly limited to either eggs with toast or noodle soup, including coffee or tea. The staff try their best and are friendly but have very limited English and give you a sense that they don’t really know what’s going on. There were a few times I had to triple check certain arrangements, which still turned out to be wrong. For example one day we rented an automatic motorbike but a manual one arrived - not a big deal.||My main issue: on our last day we booked (or thought we did) a VIP bus to Vientiane for 6am the following day. So the next day we were downstairs at 5:45am ready to go and woke up the sleeping worker to try and pay. I asked him to pay for the bus, for which he had no idea about. I tried to explain to him that his friend had booked us a bus but he said that if we had not paid yet then we were not booked on the bus, but he didn’t want to phone his friend because he was sleeping. He clearly had no idea what was going on and when I asked him to try and phone the bus company to see if we were in fact booked on he said he didn’t know what/where/how to do so. Half an hour later a tuktuk appeared and they seemed to be arranging something between themselves. The boy at reception asked me to pay and I gave him 340,000 kip but weren’t given a ticket - strange. Next thing we are taken to the bus station and the tuktuk driver (with money we gave the hotel reception) booked and tried to usher us on to a crammed public bus. After we said “No, we paid for a VIP bus”, he went and got us the correct tickets which actually cost 130,000 at the station. We then sat at the bus station from 6:30 until 8:30 waiting for the next bus as we had missed the one we wanted. So both the tuktuk and the guy at reception together made a tidy profit (80,000) of off us. ||As a place to sleep this hotel is perfect but don’t expect too much from the guys downstairs and always triple-check your arrangements... and then...

Overall our stay was good. The room and facilities were nice with all the things that you’d expect (Aircon, fan, piping hot shower, clean room everyday etc). Breakfast was slightly limited to either eggs with toast or noodle soup, including coffee or tea. The staff try their best and are friendly but have very limited English and give you a sense that they don’t really know what’s going on. There were a few times I had to triple check certain arrangements, which still turned out to be wrong. For example one day we rented an automatic motorbike but a manual one arrived - not a big deal.||My main issue: on our last day we booked (or thought we did) a VIP bus to Vientiane for 6am the following day. So the next day we were downstairs at 5:45am ready to go and woke up the sleeping worker to try and pay. I asked him to pay for the bus, for which he had no idea about. I tried to explain to him that his friend had booked us a bus but he said that if we had not paid yet then we were not booked on the bus, but he didn’t want to phone his friend because he was sleeping. He clearly had no idea what was going on and when I asked him to try and phone the bus company to see if we were in fact booked on he said he didn’t know what/where/how to do so. Half an hour later a tuktuk appeared and they seemed to be arranging something between themselves. The boy at reception asked me to pay and I gave him 340,000 kip but weren’t given a ticket - strange. Next thing we are taken to the bus station and the tuktuk driver (with money we gave the hotel reception) booked and tried to usher us on to a crammed public bus. After we said “No, we paid for a VIP bus”, he went and got us the correct tickets which actually cost 130,000 at the station. We then sat at the bus station from 6:30 until 8:30 waiting for the next bus as we had missed the one we wanted. So both the tuktuk and the guy at reception together made a tidy profit (80,000) of off us. ||As a place to sleep this hotel is perfect but don’t expect too much from the guys downstairs and always triple-check your arrangements... and then...