Bamboo Lounge Training Restaurant has launched a crowdfunding campaign via IndieGoGo to keep the training restaurant and community support ticking over during this years low tourist season. Due to political...

It’s the end of November.  It’s quiet in Luang Namtha, the time seems to have come to a stop.  The market is quiet, the streets are empty and even the...

At Bamboo Lounge  our Lao staff are always buzzing around: doing the dishes, clearing the dust off of the furniture, sweeping and – most of all – mopping the floor....

Shopping for cheese by bus, boat and a ton of tuktuks Serving high quality western food in a remote town like Luang Namtha is quite a challenge. How do you...

Sabaidee! Khop jai lai lai! The Lao words that every tourist knows are not that hard to learn. But what if you need to make something clear to a local...

Here at Forest Retreat we feel very lucky to operate our tour company/restaurant out of Luang Namtha, which is both one of South East Asia’s premier trekking destinations because of...

Written by Sam When our Lao staff come to work with us, their English language skills are usually very limited. They may have had some lessons at school, but often...

Written by AlexThe celebrations for Songkran, the water festival that accompanies Lao New Year, started early. Many people were having all day karaoke parties more than a month in advance...

For two years now, Karen and Andrej have been teaching people from the local area how to prepare and serve western food and drinks to customers at the Bamboo Lounge....

Forest Retreat kindly let me loose on their amazing pizza oven at weekends and inventing new menu items is always encouraged. Last week we took the opportunity to try our...