New Lao Paris

“Colonial ”

I actually went and checked other reviews, specifically one star reviews, before writing my own. I love this place; a few others hate it. But why? For me the divergence is one of aesthetics. This hotel provides the interplay of light and the wood-exhaling musk of everything I would call home. Mayb… more

I actually went and checked other reviews, specifically one star reviews, before writing my own. I love this place; a few others hate it. But why? For me the divergence is one of aesthetics. This hotel provides the interplay of light and the wood-exhaling musk of everything I would call home. Maybe your home was much nicer than mine. The olfactory finger on the scales of nostalgia is a deeply personal thing. Compared to my centrally located condo, perched over a blade runner cityscape in Bangkok with blaring knife through the night motorbike races cutting to ribbons the hope of quiet, this place feels like a return to home — to a place beyond home. There are ghosts here, but they aren’t malicious. There is a beckoning to another time. But forget about my appeal to hiraeth. This joint cost me 487 baht a night. Even though people make 3000 baht a month in Laos vs 9000 baht in Thailand, on average, hotels here, among other things, are more expensive. Truth be told, to maintain Bangkok profit margins, this place could likely charge 250 baht a night. But it’s cheaper than anywhere else. The owner class is price gouging in communist Laos. That’s just a reality of the strange transition the country is going through. It ain’t right, but it is. (Note: I drink cappuccino in phra khanong for 45 baht a cup. Here it is 75. We’re all being fleeced. That really is the reality of Laos right now. Also remember the locals working 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week, are earning 787,000 kip a month. The screwers are screwing them worse than us. Remember that before your next entitled meltdown. The one gouging you isn’t hearing you ). But within the scope of what Vientiane is, the beds are great, air conditioning works (I’ve stayed on multiple floors), shower is hot, rooms clean, the atmosphere is out of this world (and yet so much in it). But we all don’t have the same needs in life, and seeing a few exasperated tourists in this city, a few bourgeois babies apparently expect developing worlds with return refugees and land-mine marred bodies to provide them a seamless experience. Maybe they are the really damaged ones. Simply put, as crazy as I may sound, it is actually the empty, experience seeking but ultimately vacuous Western decline consumer class that has gone mad. This place simply cannot be one star within the market of modern day Vientiane. Maybe you don’t have my same romantic impulses to give it five, but anything less than three is symptomatic of a disconnected hyper-consumer completely disconnected from anything you’d call real. If you cannot appreciate this place, maybe the problem is you.

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