My wife's friend was in town and my neighbors asked us to babysit their new puppy, Pepsi, so we took them to the famous Rice Fields Restaurant at the southwest edge of town near Pullman and Rosewood hotels.
It was an important Buddhist holiday so we dropped by this ancient temple on our way to our meal. I'm a Buddhist, but I don't believe in any of the ceremonies or praying to the monks so I watched the dogs while they did their thing. If Buddha or God are real, I highly doubt they care if we wear special clothes or if we pray to them or not, but it brings peace of mind for people to do so.
Even though I've put the marker on the exact location and told you the general location, I doubt that you can ever find this place. Even if you use Google Maps you'll have a hard time finding it because it is on a random dirt road with mostly private homes and the sign to turn in is all in Lao language, but if you find this sign then you have made it. They even got all the English letters right which is a rarity here.
They serve mostly beer and Lao or Thai food, but they also have French fries. Do any of you remember the French not supporting the war in Iraq so the military-industrial-complex controlled media tried to change the name to "freedom fries"?
The electric tuk-tuk was popular here about five years ago, but they proved to be unreliable and took too long to charge so they went back to using the same old loud gas-guzzling crappy ones. If you see a tuk-tuk in Thailand you should avoid them like the plague because they are all mafia-connected scammers, but the tuk-tuk drivers in Laos aren't so bad. You can walk almost everywhere in Luang Prabang or ride a bicycle so they are pretty much unnecessary unless you're lazy or want some weed.
The restaurant consists of about 30 huts surrounding a rice field and has a great view of the mountains giving it a very chill and natural vibe.
I hated sitting on the ground or on tiny chairs when I first came here, but you get used to it after a while. Each hut has a fan and an outlet for you to charge your phone.
Rapper had a blast running around in the rice field and playing with the other dogs, but Pepsi was out cold once he had some food. They're not very creative with dog names here. If a dog is all black then it very likely is named "Dom" which means black or "Khow" if they're white. Brown dogs are often named Pepsi, but I've never seen a brown dog named Brown or "Namtang". Rapper got the next-door neighbor's dog pregnant and she had 11 puppies so there will be lots of puppy training in the near future, but Rapper is a good alpha leader and daddy-dog so he and I will teach them well.
Thanks for reading about our trip to the Rice Fields Restaurant today. They don't seem to have a website but their Facebook page is:
https://www.facebook.com/843845792492019/posts/1234553170087944/
And you can find them on Google Maps if you search for their Lao name:
ຮ້ານອາຫານຖຽງນານ້ອຍ
coordinates:
19.862369373614598, 102.11187714164635