After seeing good reviews for Mano on TA and in Lonely Planet, we booked in advance by e-mail and phone. We ended up staying a week at a cost of $15/night for a double room with AC, bathroom, WiFi, fridge, and cable TV. The room was large with a big ensuite bathroom which had the non-contained shower so popular in SE Asia—luckily, the toilet was on a small platform so it did not get wet during bathing. The water was slow to drain, though, which meant the floor of the bathroom stayed wet for a long time. The room was clean, but had quite a few ants in the bathroom and on some surfaces in the bedroom—NOT on the bed, thank goodness. The WiFi worked well in our 2nd floor room. The staff was nice, but did not speak English well. In fact, the man who staffs the lobby at night spoke no English at all. The woman who worked during the day spoke limited English and did provide us with a free map of the city which was extremely helpful. One nice (money-saving) bonus was the free drinking water in the lobby. We refilled our plastic bottles every day which was handy.

As others have mentioned, Mano is a bit out of the center of Luang Prabang. The walk is not bad, but gets annoying if you have to keep coming back to use the toilet, pick things up, etc. Renting bicycles is definitely the way to go--also, just a good way to see the area. Unfortunately, Mano does not rent bicycles--they recommend the place next door which requires your passport OR $160US as deposit [a bit excessive for a bicycle which rents for 16,000Kip/day ($2)]. We used the travel agency down the street which charged 17,000K and only required a passport copy. We kept the bicycles overnight so we could use them in the morning to get breakfast and the staff was fine with us parking them in the lobby—a nice gesture. The area is quiet which appealed to us even though we had to bike a little ways to get breakfast (the restaurants in the area did not open early). We woke up at 6am one morning to see the local monks come by to collect the offerings. It was a small procession, but was authentic. The offerings were all from the locals—no tourists—and seemed to be heartfelt on both sides. Quite different from the spectacle that takes place on the main street through town.

Overall, we liked Mano and would stay there again.

Luang Prabang tips:
-Night Market: amazing fresh, cheap food and wonderful handmade goods
-Sunset Cruise on the river: costs 50,000K each for about an hour. BEAUTIFUL.
-Scandinavian Bakery (on main street): 30,000K omelet breakfast including coffee (free refills), fruit, bagel, roll, juice. They also have good pizza. And, opens at 6am.
-L'Etranger Bookstore: good selection of books, 30,000K breakfast special, pots of brewed coffee, etc. Shows movies at 7pm every night on a somewhat small TV—get there early for a good seat.