Celebrating the unique beauty of northern Laos, Rosewood Luang Prabang, opened its doors few days ago, where guests are able to immerse themselves in the rich cultural history, spiritual heritage and diverse tropical landscape of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. T
The enclave features 23 guestrooms, villas, suites and tented accommodations surrounding the site’s natural waterfall, only a 10-minute drive from Luang Prabang, the 14th-century capital of ancient Laos.
The accommodations variously include their own private swimming pools, oversized balconies, outdoor wooden bathtubs and other features special to each, yet all provide the experience of immersion in a dense tropical forest. They range from Riverside Rooms, and Riverside Suites that are more than 90 square meters in size, to secluded Riverside Villas, Waterfall Pool Villas and luxury Hilltop Tents.
Each accommodation’s design and décor is unique. The rooms, suites and villas subtly recreate the French-Indochine ambiance, grace and hospitality of bygone Luang Prabang with authentic artefacts, antiques and objets reflecting the personalities and interests of travelers who might have stayed here over a century ago.
Inspired by the notion of a gracious French host — perhaps a diplomat or retired expatriate of refined taste – the Bill Bensley team painstakingly sourced and collected items for thoughtful placement in specific rooms. Guests may discover newspaper clippings and illustrations from the early 1900s; vintage Kodak cameras, the cutting-edge technology of the time; even croquet mallets from 1900 in homage to French obsession with the sport when a female team from that country competed in that year’s Olympic games.
The resort’s luxury tented villas, a first for Rosewood, are situated on a secluded hillside and were sensitively built to preserve the site’s unique flora and fauna, meld with the environment and bring guests closer to nature.
Oversized balconies display mountain and river vistas. Each of the six 75-square-meter tents is dedicated to a specific Laotian hill tribe which still inhabits the surrounding mountains, with its distinctive ethnic pattern adorning individual tent canopies and its colors, motifs and textiles in the interior lending a closer understanding of indigenous folkways.
Located at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, Luang Prabang is known for its well-preserved French colonial architecture and IndoChinese villas, monk communities and gilded temples, rich historical significance, French and Laotian cuisines, and mesmerizingly serene pace of life.