My trip was well organized. I had no problems throughout my entire tour. The guides were kind and very accommodating. :) 

Dao did an excellent job coordinating my Tour of Laos.

My review is of his coordination and planning as he was not my actual guide (though he does provide tours).

I provided a rather general request (basically had 4 days and wanted to see as much of Laos as I could and included some ideas I gleaned from the internet).  Based on that he pulled together an itinerary that had me seeing Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Pakse.  I took in natural wonders like waterfalls to ancient ruins, temples, museums, local markets, coffee / tea growers and more.

All 3 of my guides were superb and with excellent English (two very impressively fluent understanding small subtleties and nuances).  All had in-depth historic, current and local knowledge that made the tours very interesting, informative and allowed me to connect to the people and places we visited.

Each greeted me upon arrival with my name on a sign (be it airport or train station) and saw me off to my next destination taking me as far as they could, often walking me to checkin.

I made a change to one tour the day before (wanted to see another waterfall) and this was happily accommodated though there was an extra fee as it was in the opposite direction of the rest of the tour which I was happy with.

Each guide was on WhatsApp so I reached out and was able to checkin with all of them before my tour started.

The accommodations arranged were generally nice,  clean and well located.  Two (the one in Vientiane and Luang Prabang) were perfectly located, near sites, night market and had lots of charm and character.  The third is Pakse was just OK, clean, friendly staff though the rooms lacked natural night  and the nature of Pakse there isn’t much to be located near so not much you can do there.  The breakfast was also a bit limited for that one but for one night it was fine and was a good stepping off point for activities.

One almost glitch was my initial flights from Luang Prabang and Pakse were cancelled.  Dao had provided me the confirmation number so I was checking and saw it was cancelled.  I contacted him and he rebooked it.  Now he might had noticed this if I didn’t but with travel I like to check on such things.  As a side note I found checking flight status with Lao Airlines a bit tricky.  For me, the only way I could verify was using the App on the phone.  As best as I could find, their website just doesn’t have a functioning way to doing this.

In terms of communication Dao was great.  He uses WhatsApp and it worked and he was responsive.

For the final payment he did ask for a SWIFT wire transfer which for me had a $45 fee (which I paid).  All in all I was OK doing this as I didn’t have to bring the additional cash with me on the trip.  Was fairly easy for me to setup on line with my bank but was a first for me so made me a little uneasy.

In my initial contact with Dao I thought he was to be my guide, as we progressed he explained he was coordinating it so that was a little bit of a surprise, but in the end, as shared the guides he provided were really, really, really great, the itinerary awesome and the experience wonderful so I am very happy with how it all turned out.