Rosewood Luang Prabang

The bar at Rosewood Luang Prabang stands over a creek where elephants once roamed, and 210 of them have stayed on, carved by hand, with the tables set on tusks that are, thankfully, fake. The hotel's story is that this was a forgotten 19th-century hill station in the Nahm Dong Valley, ten minutes' drive outside Luang Prabang, and Bill Bensley has told it in French colonial furniture and carved wall panels. The rooms are sorted by height. Riverside rooms and suites keep low beside the water, and the Waterfall Pool Villas each have a pool of their own within earshot of the cascades. The Hilltop Tents are up in the trees, with the widest views: canvas sides rolled up onto a wooden deck facing moss-green mountains, and paper lanterns clustered under a ceiling of deep blue cloth.

Recommended for couples who want Luang Prabang's temples in the morning and a quiet valley for the rest of the day, and for families who can manage without a kids club: the Two-Bedroom Riverside Suite is made for them, and babysitting can be booked a day ahead. The old town and its night market are ten minutes' drive. Yoga is on an open-air platform above the river, and the hotel arranges a half-day boat trip upriver to the Pak Ou Caves. Dinner at The Great House, open-sided under a dark-wood ceiling painted with gold emblems, is Lao and French cooking from the hotel's own garden. Or, after a day at Kuang Si Falls, 45 minutes' drive away, the Private Waterfall Dinner sets a candlelit table beside the estate's own falls: a waterfall with table service.