I have lived in Asia for aorund 14 years. I have traveled all around Asia, and always organizing my trips without any help and reluctant to having tour guides or similar. But this time, my wife and myself take a last minute decision and decided to go to Laos. And then we both decided to hire someone to help us to visit the country. We did not have much choice because of the tight schedule. And when we landed in Vientiane we found Serd´s friendly smile. Attentive, kind, generous, intelligent....Just a few adjectives to qualify Serd, who not only chose carefully what we should visit but also took care of every detail of the journey, always adapting skillfully the itinerary to our mood. After seven days, we considered him more a friend than a tour guide. And we certainly meet him again in the near future.   

My wife and I and an Indian friend were treated by Serd like a royalty during our days with him in Laos. He knew history, the cultures of the hill tribes and ways to cater to our specific interests, which were Lao food tastes. We did not wish to go to places that use visited by the many tourists, and he took us to remote restaurants of good food and beauty. I enjoyed snacking with him on bamboo grubs. But we mostly enjoyed his great patience and friendly personality. We are from the NYC area in New Jersey USA. Traditionally folks from there are picky. You could only like Serd. His English vocabulary and pronunciation was outstanding. Very easily understood by my hard of hearing ears.

We are a couple (40 and 41) from Germany and had a fantastic 19-day trip through Laos with Serd. During our journey we learned much about buddhism (as he is a former novice he knows a lot about it, of course) and Lao culture. He made it possible for us to get in contact with local people and to get a feeling how their life is like, which is otherwise quite difficult, because we do not speak Lao and most of the local people do not speak English, whereas Serd's English is excellent. Even through our long drives through the country it was never boring, because we stopped all the while to visit something along the road: a temple, a market (where we tested local food we never tried before), a waterfall, ... Whenever he made a suggestion to change our original itenary it was a good choice, not to forget his recommendations for having lunch or dinner. While driving (and we have been sitting in the car a lot) we talked about many different topics, because he is also interested in our way of life and how we see things. So after 19 days it was very hard to say goodbye to a friend and we hope to get back and see him again.

Ours was a family group of 3 Octogenarians, teens and mid ages, and planning for this trip to Vientiane, Laos was not without apprehensions and anxieties. Selecting a tour guide was indeed a "throw of dice", and indeed, it was a very good one! Serd was a perfect guide, he was able to connect with all of us from the start, he is friendly, patient and very knowledgeable. My father called him "Mr Know-All". His resourcefulness is excellent because he was able to customise the tour to suit our objectives and pace, even making changes at the last minute. He tried his best to accommodate to each of our wishes, and we all left Vientiane with very good memories and feelings. Would we look for Serd again on our next holiday to Laos? Yes! That's for sure!!