Eat

Saffron Caffè

Excellent coffee. It comes from the surrounding mountains. The banana shake macchiato is recommended. Delicious fresh baked goods such as their cinnamon swirls and banana muffins go quickly. Granola and salad wraps are good.

coffee

Getting there: around the corner from L'Elephant Restaurant in Wat Nong village
Website: saffroncoffee.com (opens in a new tab)

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Listing from Wikivoyage: Luang Prabang, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Updated 28 Sept 2026. Something wrong? Tell us.

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Nava Mekong Cruises
2 cruises on the Mekong with full meals. Pak Ou Cave cruise goes upstream, includes a visit to the "1000 Buddhas cave" (entrance fee included) and a whisky village, where passengers are given enough time to visit. Sunset cruise goes downstream, includes a traditional music and dance show.
10:00-14:00 & 17:00-19:00US$25-30
Eat
L'Elephant
A lovely restaurant with a mix of Lao and French foods. The food is extremely good, but has its price. Ingredients are of the highest quality, ranging from French Camembert to Laotian lemongrass and river weeds. The menu is both pricey and some items do not justify the price tag. Great ambience.
See
Alms ceremony
Sai Bat
Monks at dawn collect alms of rice from kneeling villagers (and early-rising tourists). Ask your guesthouse host to assist you the day before in preparing if you'd like to get up and give alms in the morning. The alms giving ceremony is one which, while picturesque, is not without its detractors. Unscrupulous local merchants have used the eagerness of tourists to participate in this tradition as a means of making easy money. They sometimes sell unsuitable, stale and even unsafe food, resulting in monks falling ill after having consumed the offerings, Hence the growing resistance to continuing the tradition. The government, however, has made it clear that the monks must continue the custom or be replaced by lay persons clothed in saffron robes in order to keep up appearances, thereby maintaining tourist revenue. If you wish to participate in this ceremony, prepare the food or fruit yourself. Avoid giving food of dodgy quality. Another problem is the rampant photography: while a photo might look nice in your collection, think about how it must feel for the monks to have hundreds of tourists photographing them every day. Some lowlifes even stand next to the monks, blinding them with flashbulbs. Consider watching this old tradition from a distance instead of degrading it.
Daily 05:00-06:00
Eat
Nang Tao
Excellent stop for Lao cuisine. Their larb was a favourite in the area. Most of the staff do not speak English, but there is one fellow there that does (and you can point at the menu).
Closed · opens 7 am35000 kip