I'm writing this from my room at Elephant Crossing. We paid $50 for a night in a Deluxe Queen room with a balcony over the water. I guess I should be happy to get such a low price but somehow I wish I could have paid a bit more and got a bit more.
The room is shabby. The pipe for the airconditioning unit comes through the bathroom and drips water all over the floor. The bathtub is falling away from the tiled wall and the shower curtain is badly mildewed. One wall is lime green. There seems to be the remnants of a drawing of someone's genitals on the wall. There are marks on the ceiling where people have squished mosquitos.
On the positive side, the air conditioning works, there is a fan, there is a TV, it has a nice view of the river and the mountains beyond. The bed linen appears to be clean.
The real problem is that this dive seems to be rated as one of the best in Vang Vieng. What kind of miserable life are people living in the other hotels? I can't wait to get out of this hotel and Vang Vieng.

For the price we paid we would have expected a much nicer room. Especially the powersupply in the room was horrible. It almost fell of the wall and was stuck all over. Almost scary.
The restaurantservice was also really slow and the food nothing special.
The location though is really great, overlooking the river and some of the staff were very adequate, mostly the ones at the reception.

When we arrived here for a 1 night stay, we had to ask 4 times for the room key. We finally got it and the view was great, room was ok. We got 2 singles for my wife and I, thought we would get a double.

Don, one of the bar men was fantastic and so was most of the desk staff, all but 1 wanted to help.

We booked VIP bus tickets through the hotel, a tuk tuk pickes us up and overcrowded the vehicle with people hanging off the back. We were dropped off at a shed beside the old runway (during the war) and without any explanation the man drove away and left us there. We saw the real bus terminal a little bit away. He came back with another overcrowded load th drove off again and came back with a small bus, not a VIP bus.

We all crammed on and drove off. It was not a VIP bus and we paid way too much. Sme ppl paid 50,000 but we paid 80,000 kip each. I assume the hotel took the rest.

Was not happy.

Five of our family stayed here for 8 days. The views are incredible, craggy limestone peaks across the Nam Song river. The food was fantastic, especially the soups, full of fresh ingredients straight from the hotels own gardens across the river.