We arrived in Vientiane early in the morning, so we had not booked accommodation in advance and planned to find somewhere on arrival. On top of that, I had read plenty of reviews warning that the photos on Agoda for Lao hotels often do not match reality, so either way we wanted to look at the rooms first and only then check in.
I had several hotels marked on the map, and we went to those first. As it turned out, we did not like any of them, so we carried on looking — especially since, as is usual in Asia, all the cheap guesthouses and hotels in Vientiane are concentrated in one area, not far from the Mekong (Samsenthai and Setthathirath streets). It is very convenient: every second building is a guesthouse. Admittedly, searching with backpacks on our backs is tiring, so it would of course be ideal to head straight to a specific hotel and stay there. But that was not how it worked out for us — we walked for a long time.
There is a great deal of accommodation in Vientiane, and in any case you will find somewhere to spend the night. There is everything from very cheap to luxury hotels with a concierge (in 2014, when we were there, the cheapest rooms cost 40,000–60,000 kip).
All prices in this story are from 2014 and are given in Lao kip.
For example, prices like these:
We were looking for a room meeting the following criteria: a double bed, an en-suite shower, air conditioning, a wardrobe, a window and Wi-Fi.
The hotels recommended in online trip reports were Syri 2 and Youth Inn. The first has both single rooms with a shared shower and rooms with a shower inside. We went straight to see the better room, priced at 100,000 kip (the most expensive). The room turned out to be tiny and windowless, so inside it was thoroughly gloomy. The internet worked poorly too.
In Youth Inn, the café on the ground floor was full of backpackers, with prices from 40,000–60,000 kip. There were no rooms with one bed available. We looked at one with two beds — again windowless, resembling some kind of barracks, with hospital-green walls. Even if you spend the whole day walking around the city and only sleep at the hotel, I could not have stayed there; I really did not like it. There were no free rooms with windows.
In general, wherever we looked, rooms with windows were for some reason a great rarity.
Despite the low season, there were few vacancies, and almost everywhere only the most expensive rooms were free. At first we also called in at hotels, not just guesthouses. For some reason a rule applies here: within one price category, rooms in hotels are considerably worse than rooms in guesthouses.
One such hotel was Anou Paradise Hotel. The room cost $20, and when we saw it I decided I would not go into another hotel — guesthouses only. Not only was it completely unwelcoming and dirty, it had not even been minimally tidied; everything was turned upside down. I do not know what exactly had happened there, but if I were in the hotel staff’s shoes I would not show potential guests a room like that. It is a pity I did not take a photo — I was apparently simply horrified. The bed was not even made, just a bare mattress on the bed, and some wires were sticking out of the wall… In short, do not go there.
The sign of that dreadful hotel:
Down this street to the left there are plenty of guesthouses in various price categories:
In the end we decided to stay at a guesthouse where, although there was no decent internet (the Wi-Fi was picked up poorly in the room, even with a boosting antenna), it was quite clean and cosy.
The guesthouse is called Chantha Guesthouse and, by all appearances, is still operating: as of October 2026, there is a listing for Chantha GuestHouse and Restaurant on Trip.com with an address in the same quarter by the Mekong (Setthathirath Street). It is located here:
The rooms vary; the price list looks like this:
We chose room 2, but we were given a small discount (because the promised internet barely worked), so we paid 100,000 kip per night.
Photos of the room:
A bathroom with a proper, non-plastic bathtub (a great rarity for Asia):
What the room has:
- A large, roomy wardrobe with lots of little shelves and hangers
- Fridge
- A window!
- A large double bed
- Television
- Lots of mirrors
- Table with a chair
- Air conditioning
- Shower with a proper (non-plastic) bathtub
- Hot water
The room was not as small as the previous ones we had looked at. Although there was almost no internet, on the whole we liked the room. The only thing was that small ants periodically appeared and disappeared, so you need to watch very carefully that there is no food and no crumbs left around.
