Luang Prabang is growing up. This magical melange of golden temples and colonial villas has new restaurants, spas and fancy hotels offering superlative service

You can sense that Luang Prabang is changing the instant you hop from the turboprop. Suitcases outnumber backpacks. Loafers are replacing sandals. Four-wheel drives have supplanted songtaews as the primary means of transport into town.

Luang Prabang, with its gilded temples, French colonial manses and intermittent electrical power, is growing increasingly sophisticated (and attracting sophisticated travellers) while retaining its slumberous charm.

Monks in saffron robes still ply its main street, paying little heed to the temptations offered by an ever-increasing number of bakeries and coffee shops.

Sacks of rice still arrive by boat, but the stevedores hauling them up the Mekong’s banks scarcely note the nearby boutiques selling jewellery and aromatherapy products.

Laotian men and women still sweat side-by-side on wood benches at Ban Pakham Herbal Steam Bath and Massage, although well-heeled visitors increasingly opt for the silk-and-sandalwood comforts of the town’s newer, tonier spas.

Food is everywhere: Laotian, French and their fusion, along with Italian, American, Indian and Thai. Just a decade ago, the culinary offerings were mostly limited to the sleepy main drag and a handful of open-air eateries along the Mekong.

Today this isolated outpost, surrounded by nearly impenetrable mountains and the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers, is reclaiming its glory as both the former royal capital and the home of the country’s finest cuisine.

Declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1995, Luang Prabang sits gloriously frozen in time, sheltered from the changing world by physical boundaries and the communist government that has run Laos since 1975. Satellite dishes, cell phones and hair gel, however, are making inroads.

Today, roughly 600 buildings in this city of 60,000 people are earmarked for preservation. Many of the city’s five dozen wats are also being restored, a by-product of tourist donations and the efforts of the French-government financed Heritage House (La Maison du Patrimoine), which has taught several dozen monks how to rebuild their temples using traditional techniques.

While Luang Prabang is changing, its attractions remain largely the same. Visitors rise at dawn to watch the legions of barefoot monks silently march through the mist to collect alms of sticky rice. Vacationers follow the processions of tangerine-coloured robes to temples – perhaps Wat Xieng Thong, the 16th-century masterpiece with tiered roofs that sweep to the sky. Or they stroll through recently re-cobbled brick lanes to admire the town’s handsome Lao-French architecture.

Luang Prabang is marginally busier these days, but its grace and laid-back ambience remain its greatest assets. People return to decompress, to have a traditional massage at one-third of Bangkok’s prices or to splurge on fancier spa packages in new settings.

The new Luang Prabang is perhaps best embodied by Maison Souvannaphoum, the former residence of Prince Souvannaphouma. Just a five-minute walk from the night market, it has been revamped by the Banyan Tree organisation. It offers deluxe accommodation, spa treatments, royal cuisine and five-star service.

Manager Philippe Cavory’s attention to detail is redefining the (formerly lax) standards for service at the city’s top-end hotels.

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Luang Prabang revitalised

Maison Souvannaphoum’s front desk and dining-room staff address guests by name. Rooms are cleaned twice daily. Aromatherapy lamps are lit at dusk, when an appetiser is delivered to each room and a flower left on each side of the bed. Later, when guests go to dinner, a dessert and scented candles make their appearance.

This is Banyan Tree – actually, the sister brand, Colours of Agsana – so luxuriant spa treatments are de rigueur.

In the countryside west of Luang Prabang, the Villa Santi Resort and Grand Luang Prabang are offering similar resort-style luxury and pampering. But their location makes a spur-of-the-moment trip into town a tad more difficult.

For something a little edgier, there’s the 3 Nagas on Thanon Sakkarine and the Apsara facing the Nam Khan on Thanon Kingkitsarath. The Apsara’s open-air bar and dining room – Burmese urns, polished concrete floor and funky hanging lanterns – exude a shadowy, sensual ambience.

People looking for history often opt to sleep at the Villa Santi, a 127-year-old French-Lao colonial manse that was once the home of King Sisavong’s wife and later belonged to Princess Manilai.

Or they book a room at the Auberge Calao, a stately 75-year-old Sino-Portuguese residence overlooking the Mekong.

It’s a leisurely stroll from any of these hotels to Luang Prabang’s oldest temples and newest hot spots.

Lemongrass, on Thanon Khaem Khong offers spa products, soaps, decorative items. Opened three months ago by Franke Mommaers of Belgium, the boutique sells its own line of massage oils and balms.

It also operates a riverside restaurant serving pasta, fried rice, salads, frites, chocolate mousse and coffee gelato.

“Luang Prabang is a small city with a European sense about it,” Mommaers says. “Wines, coffee, baguettes – they’re all here.”

A few doors down is the Luang Prabang Handicraft Centre (expect a name change next month), run by Myline Descamps, a French-Vietnamese designer who was schooled in Bangkok and lives half of each month in Luang Prabang and half in Tokyo.

Descamps and her three French partners opened their shop in January. They specialise in high-quality Lao silks, bags, baskets, clothing, cosmetics and jewellery. Next month, they’ll expand into an adjoining building and launch a teahouse and information centre selling books on Lao history and culture.

Just around the corner on Ban Vat Nong is OckPopTok (East Meets West), an established gallery featuring textiles by master Lao artists.

Handmade silk clothing, wall hangings, bags and pillows, and local green and red teas, are sold at Mulberries, a 10-month-old store near the post office and the town fountain. Downstairs is JoMa, a full-bore coffee-house and bakery serving food and drinks in an exposed-brick, big-art environment.

Luang Prabang’s java-and-juice stalwarts – the Scandinavian Bakery, Healthy & Fresh and the charming Cafe Ban Vat Sene, with its teak tables and rattan chairs – still do thriving businesses on the main drag.

Luang Prabang doesn’t have a movie theatre – it has something better: Le Cinema, a DVD rental house with four private viewing rooms and more than 500 movies to choose from. A Lao and a Brit opened it in January, and it’s full most evenings. Selections run the gamut from commercial to art-house and classic.

Many visitors now spend their evenings getting pummelled and pounded in massage parlours along Thanon Sisavangvong, the main street. A step above the storefront establishments and numerous notches below the Maison Souvannaphoum is the Spa Garden on Ban Phonheuang.

The Spa Garden was opened in April by Somchai “Peng” Sibounheuang, 27, a Vientiane native who earned her massage certification in Bangkok. It offers a full menu of massages and therapy treatments.

“Lao massage is totally different from Thai massage,” Somchai says. “We only use the hands, fingers and palms to massage. And we massage slowly – much slower than Thai massage.”

The food front is constantly expanding. The latest addition is Tamnak Lao (Three Elephants), in a restored colonial mansion directly across from the Villa Santi. Wise diners reserve a balcony seat for a view of the Villa’s twinkling lights and colonial beauty.

Tamnak Lao serves local specialities, including a luscious larb pla of minced fish with lemongrass, chilli peppers, mint and coriander. The watercress salad is tossed with lettuce, coriander, cucumber, ground pork and hard-boiled egg. Its yolk-based dressing moderates the watercress’s peppery bite.

Just down the street is 3 Nagas, a crimson-tinged restaurant that serves French-influenced Lao dishes (try the water buffalo stew with eggplant and galangal, or the pork sausage, richly flavoured with lemongrass and herbs).

A few blocks away on Ban Vat Nong is the ochre-hued, fan-cooled L’Elephant, the finest French restaurant in Luang Prabang, known for applying Gaelic sensibilities to Mekong fish, Lao boar, buffalo and venison.

L’Elephant, 3 Nagas, Caf? Ban Vat Sene and Mango Tree are all run by Gilles Vautrin, a former telecommunications specialist from France, and Yannick Upravan, a native of Vientiane, who studied the culinary arts in France after his family fled Laos in 1980.

Should you want a long-time Lao favourite, go to the Park Houay Mixay, which is on Ban Xieng Mouane.

It has been around for seven years, but remains something of a local secret. It offers an excellent anise-tinged beef or chicken stew, succulent pork-stuffed bamboo, tasty duck larb and a melt-in-your-mouth steamed fish. Its khai pen, dried river moss, is an acquired taste.

Hal Lipper

The Nation