At 9 pm, after a 12-hour bus trip, we finally arrived in Luang Prabang.

The endpoint was the Northern Station, which is located outside the city, close to the airport. This means that you need transportation to go to the centre.

Once we got off the bus, we have been assaulted by 6-7 tuk-tuk drivers. Everything went super fast: they put us on a tuk-tuk and started the usual price negotiation when we were already seated.  We were on a tuk-tuk by ourselves, not together with the other local people, and we found this situation a bit suspicious… We actually didn’t even want a tuk-tuk!

Their negotiation started with the first offer of 50’000 LAK (5.80 $) per person. We tried to go away because it was too much, and the offer suddenly went down to 40’000 LAK (4.60 $). We really didn’t like this behaviour, and we actually didn’t need to go to the city at that time because we didn’t have any hotel booked.

After a short discussion between us, we decided to get off the tuk-tuk and find an alternative.

Is there an alternative to go from the Northern Bus Station to the city at 9 pm? Nope! But no worries, there is always a plan B. We decided to overnight close to the bus station, and go to the city on the next day.

We checked our app maps.me to see if there were hotels around there. Cool, there were 3 guesthouses not further than 10 minutes walk.

We entered the first guesthouse asking for a room. The night watchman was there with some friends. He couldn’t speak one word in English, so one of his friends acted as interpreter for us. After an animated discussion, the friend told us that they had an available room for 120’000 LAK (14 $). Whaaat? We were coming from villages where accommodation costs around 50’000 LAK! We said that we didn’t have enough money and that we should count how much we had.

In reality, our loot was 164’000 LAK, but we told him we had only 90’000 LAK.

The 2 friends discussed for a couple of minutes and, in the end, we have been told that we could get the room for 90’000 LAK (10.50 $). Great, our strategy worked out perfectly! Probably we could have lowered our loot a bit more, without problems! But anyway we saved a small amount 🙂 In the evening, it is easier to get discounts because for them it is better to earn little money than have rooms empty. One of the biggest losses for hotels is to have rooms not booked.

We didn’t feel like looking further, so we checked in immediately, without registration, without an introduction (check out time, wifi password, etc.) and without a payment receipt. We were so tired that we didn’t realize that right away.

So our final plan was to sleep one night there, rest and restore a bit, and the day after go to Luang Prabang by stopping a tuk-tuk on the road for a fair price (not 50’000 LAK per person, as requested when we arrived).

It may sound funny to negotiate on such small amounts. But when you are a digital nomad, you really care about any cent you spend or save. If you make a small calculation you will see that small amounts make the difference.

An example: 50’000 LAK per person is 100’000 LAK in total. If you negotiate the price to 40’000 LAK in total, the difference is 60’000 LAK (approx 7.50 $), which is an important saving for 3-4-km transportation. In this way, in 1 month you save 225 $ (7.50*30), and in 1 year you save 2’700 $! You need to smartly negotiate in order to save money during your long term trip. In the end, together with accommodation and food, transportation has the biggest impact on the budget.

Let’s go back to our story. We settled the accommodation, and we kept a generous sum aside for the day-after transportation to the city.

At this point, we only needed something to eat but our budget was very limited (14’000 LAK, not even enough for one fried rice with vegetables). We actually didn’t eat during all the day: partially because of the bumpy trip, partially because we didn’t have time to buy/eat food.

We went back to the bus station where there was a small street food area: nothing within our budget! Not even packages of cookies or other local snacks… we finally decided to bite the bullet and skip the dinner.

It was already 11 pm, we went to bed and fell asleep before we knew! The alarm went on the day after at 8 am, and we were ready to live another beautiful day.

At 9 am we were back at the bus station, again. We found an officer and we asked him which was a fair price for transportation to the city. He informed us that tuk-tuk was the only solution, and the rate was 20’000 LAK per person. Perfect, we called a tuk-tuk, we paid 40’000 and finally left to Luang Prabang city centre, very curious to discover this colonial city!