There’s a Tadias in my hotel room! (Fans of Dr. Who will understand…) Or at least, that’s the appearance of Inthira rooms in Laos’s colonial town of Thakaek along the Mekong. Facing Thailand’s Nakhorm Phanom, it seems but a stone’s throw across the river, but it will take another few years for a direct bridge link – although construction is well underway. Inthira is part of the Kop Jai Deux family, based on the popular – and once trendy – restaurant in Lao capital Vientianne. Its hotels are small and boutique, built around colonial shells in long forgotten hubs, such as Champasak in the deep south.

My room had a balcony facing the city’s old colonial core, and two innovative cubicles across from my bed – one for shower, the other for toilet. Sensibly, the wc adjoins the outer wall with louvered windows. Hygiene is immaculate (something all too rare in Laos, what with its least developed nation status), but you would wish the restaurant a bit more trendy creativity using local Lao origin dishes. It’s the exact same menu from Vientiane, and raw salmon sushi in the tropics, plus frozen bready pizza and tasteless deep fried chicken wings just doesn’t do it for me. Nor the frozen bread freighted in from Vientianne, when fresh baguettes are freshly baked daily across the street.