The Riverfront Hotel was excellent value for money. We booked two connecting rooms and were very pleasantly surprised by how spacious they were, lovely and clean and with a very efficient air conditioning system. About 1500 Baht per night with breakfast included. The breakfast was okay but Thai orientated not Farang. Very good for a family of 4 with 2 young children and excellent for the wife to go shopping with the market right outside the hotel front door. She tells me there are better bargains to be had from the shops on the side of the road rather than the underground market. In fact, she reckons the underground market buy their stocks from the on-street shops.
We did book a table at the Mukdahan Manor for the second evening and that was great. It is the private residence of an Australian and his wife and the house, pool and surrounds are built to a very high standard. It sits on the riverbank and I would think the day time views are excellent. The food was delicious, fried rice with prawns, 1/6 dozen scallops, bbq pork, stir fried beef and for moi, a 300 gram Thai steak with vegetables and mashed potatoes. More expensive Australian and Wagyū steak was also available. Not expensive at 1350 Baht for a family of 4 with 3 beers included in the bill. I would guess that is the place for breakfast and I would think at 1,400 baht per night per room with breakfast for two included would be very good value for most travelers.
See:
http://mukdahan-manor.com/index.html
I was very surprised by the pace of life in Mukdahan - so slow! Once we traveled past Ta Tum and on the road to Yasothon the traffic got progressively less and less. Once past Yasothon on the on the way to Mukdahan we almost had the road to ourselves. Very easy driving. Mukdahan Province has a population of less than 400,000 and is ranked as the 52nd largest in Thailand. In contrast, Surin Province has a population of nearly 1.5 million and is ranked 10th largest. It shows. That said, Mukdahan sports a large Lotus-Tesco, a very large Big C shopping mall and a newly opened Robinson's. I am told much of their business comes from day trippers from Savannakhet. And of course we had an afternoon trip to the famed temple at That Phanon. All in all, a very good trip to a lovely part of the country. Thoroughly recommended for a relaxing break away from Surin.
P.S. Don't expect to find a lively night life - I don't think there is one.
P.P.S. We ventured south some 15 kilometers to visit the Mukdahan National Park. The admission price for Thais was 20 Baht for adults and 10 Baht for children. The admission price for 'all' foreigners was 200 Baht. I said words to the effect of "you know you can stick your admission fee right up your a#$@!", put the car into gear and turned around. It was very hot and I did not see why I had to pay 10 times as much as a Thai to go walkabouts to see some rocky outcrops. More to the point, I will not ever pay more than my wife to enter a Thai National Park and I didn't.
