Comparing to other Guesthouses in the nice Luang Prabang the Say Nam Khan Guesthouse is clean, a real historical building, has a nice view over the Nam Khan river, and the staff is very helpful within their possibilities. We enjoyed to reach all places in Luang Prabang in just minutes, good restaurants around, laudries and shops also.
The breakfast ist small, but for Laos absolutely good. The transfer to the airport was perfect.
We can absolutely reccommend the Say Nam Khan Guesthouse. About the less good reviews: Please accept, that you are in Laos, not in Switzerland!

The room I stayed in was very small and the furnishings were very old. The internet access was spotty from the pc's in the lobby. In fact I saw a rat scamper through the lobby one evening while I was reading. The staff was friendly but the hotel is in great need of renovation. I paid $40 a night to stay here and felt the price was too high for the quality. The included breakfast was barely passable. The only positive comment is that the location is convenient to the main street with the restaurants and night market.

In general, I can not recommend going to Luang Prabang at all. I tried to take some tours but the ones I was interested in were not offered while I was there. There are a limited number of things you can do on your own like climbing to the mountain top, visiting vats, and the market. The weather was cooler in January than I expected so pack some sweaters and long pants. The $35 visa was excessive for such a short stay for most travelers.

The Lao Air flight was in a prop plane. My return flight was late causing us to have a further delay due to air traffic delay going into Chiang Mai. The plane flies low so it can be rather bumpy.

We stayed four nights at the Say Nam Khan Guesthouse in January 2008. Luang Prabang has a number of very nice boutique hotels and guesthouses. The Say Nam Khan is not one of them. We tried booking a room in Luang Prabang 2 months before our trip, but our first 14 choices were already booked. We sent a booking request to the Say Nam Khan, but they never responded. This should have been a clue. We booked the guesthouse through Green Discovery Laos, with whom we had arranged a trek. The Say Nam Khan is rundown and in need of repair. Our room was small, with no place to put our luggage, except the floor. The bathroom sink leaked (gushed) water onto the floor. It took three requests and about a day to get that fixed. Linens and towels were way past their retirement age. One day the cleaning staff forgot to give us clean towels. We had to ask twice before we got them. On the positive side, the Say Nam Khan has one of the best locations in Luang Prabang, overlooking the Nam Khan River, a half block from the main road with lots of restaurants. Our room had a beautiful view of the River. The breakfast (included with the room) was pretty good. But the staff was clueless and not helpful at all.

The location is very convenient and it was the only internet reservation we could get. BUT, I wish we had *not* prepaid for our entire 5 night stay via luang-prabang-hotels.com (whl.travel). Once we were there and stuck with it, we accepted it with regret and it detracted from our stay (I walked the town looking longingly at all the other hotels / inns that we could have stayed in).

In general, the rooms look fine. The bathrooms are decent / OK. The rooms in the "annex" / not in the main building (our first room was in there) are very basically built and you can hear everything - the street, the roosters who start at 2:30am, the neighbor hotel guest retching in the toilet for several hours over night. The main building is built more solidly and noise is *much* reduced.

Our specific experience was this: Our prepaid airport transfer was not waiting for us so we ended up having to hire a taxi at the airport. When we arrived at the guesthouse, we were not given the room reserved (VIP room - $50/night) because there was a problem with it when we checked in (or did they just have it double booked?).

The room we did get, a standard river view room in the "annex" building (rm 106 - also $50/nt), had a patio (nice) without anything to sit on (which made it less than useful). The bed was so hard that my hip would go numb if I slept on my side.

On our 2nd night, we heard a large rodent moving around in the thatched roof ceiling and let the front desk know. On the 3rd night, a rat started squeaking loudly in the ceiling from it's nest (bits of which could be seen coming through the thatched ceiling - and being from DC - I know what a rat sounds like as opposed to a mouse). We told the front desk - the guy didn't know what to do and said they would try to do something in the morning. We were laid back enough to say that was OK and went to sleep to the squeaking rat. An hour later, we were awoken by at least 2 rats screaming and fighting in the thatched ceiling. There was enough movement that we thought the fighting rats would fall through the thatch at any minute onto our bed. We flew out of the room with all our quickly gathered belongings and made the front desk guy relocate us to another room - which ended up being on the back of the building.

We stayed for 2 nights in this smaller room (rm 219) - which was $20 less per night without any of our pre-paid money being refunded to us. Thankfully, we did not have any rats in this room and we were just resolved to finish our stay in this place and take the experience as a lesson learned in pre-paying for hotels...