Learned a lot in the royal palace/national museum. Felt like the guide really skimped on Wat Xiengthong though; we spent all of 10 minutes there. In the end the 4-hour tour became just 3 hours.

Started with lunch at Manifa elephant camp. Better than I'd expected. But the highlight was definitely the interaction with the elephant! We had a wonderful time feeding it bananas. Boat ride to the caves took about an hour. It was unique, and perhaps due to our timing, pretty much empty, so we were in and out in less than 30 minutes, which was great. Whiskey-making village felt like a sales-stop, but the people there weren't pushy at all, so it was Ok. Again, we were the only foreigners there. On the cruise back, we were lucky enough to get a great view of the sunset over the Mekong. The guide that day was wonderful. Friendly yet professional.

The falls were beautiful. Saw some bears at the rescue centre. Didn't manage to see the sunset on the cruise back due to the weather. Guide was Ok, a little pushy.

The company offers many different tours and options to costumers. Therefore we with different people and different guides during different legs of the tour. We got an extra sunset cruise on the first day which meant we returned to the city an hour later than the original plan which was a slight hassle as we had to rebook our dinner reservation. The city tour on the morning of the first day felt a bit rushed - We would have liked to spend some more time exploring the Former Royal Palace and Wat Xiengthong. On the other hand, there was a bit too much empty time at the Elephant Park on the 2nd day as we had to wait for 2 hours for a group (that had gone to the waterfalls in the morning) that we were going to join for the Pak-Ou caves and sunset cruise. They kindly offered us some more time interacting with the elephants which was nice. Overall quite happy with the experience, but things could be more effeciently planned or at least more accurately explained on the website and the email we got beforehand.

The trip was very well co-ordinated with the various components. The first part was a comfortable 1.5 hour on a boat and included a stop at waterside kymu village. We were then transferred to a clean comfortable van for a 2 hour road journey to Manifa elephant camp where we enjoyed a terrific buffet lunch and had opportunity to meet an elephant. Our bags were taken back directly to Luang Prabang. We then joined a larger boat with lots of people who were on a day trip and visited the Pak Ou Caves and whiskey village before arriving in LP for sunset. Our bags were there and a van took us back to our hotel. All in all a lovely way to get back from Nong Khiaw rather than just spending it in a van. Would well recommend. All of the guides were fantastic and the execution was very slick.