Elena Luo Like 0

Lijiang & Shangri-La is among the most beautiful places we have visited in China.
Elena was our guide for travel to Lijiang & Shangri-La during March 2016.  She was very knowledgeable about the various sight-seeing places, places to eat and cost effective options to travel.Despite being a big group ( 6 Adults & 5 kids ) , Elena was able to meet demanding individual preferences of the large group without being stressed.Even engaging the kids on a long ride with intelligent riddles and questions. Would highly recommend Elena as your guide for travel to Lijiang & Shangri-La.

Elena was a very thoughtful and knowledgeable guide when we traveled through Yunnan Province in November 2015. She guided us in Lijiang where my husband was bedridden the whole day with food poisoning, and she stayed in constant communication via WeChat and even came to our hotel at 9:30pm that night unsolicited to give us much-needed meds and water. My husband felt much better the following day thanks to some antibiotics Elena also helped us get earlier the previous day. With her interpretation and kind nature we were able to fight our sicknesses and enjoy the rest of our trip.

She also guided us through some small villages in the Dali area, which were my favorite parts of the trip. The small villages were lovely. We visited Shangri-la where a lot of Tibetan villages are. She took us to private homes that we wouldn't think to enter, so we could see a variety of architectural and lifestyles.

Elena was able to help my husband with his vegetarian diet and our request for less oily foods, which isn't as easy as expected in China.

She is very well-traveled herself, energetic with a childlike enthusiasm and is always open to our thoughts and ideas. She was an English major in university and has taught English in Thailand, so her language skills are great. I really appreciated her compassion and empathy for us and others on our trip. I also enjoyed learning about all the ethnic minority cultures through her insightful commentary. She placed a great deal of trust in us, as we did not pay for the trip until the middle and again in the end (rather than at the beginning). In turn we placed our trust in her and our driver as well.

Elena: Highly Recommended Guide! My husband and I travelled in China in October 2015 and Elena was our guide through a walk and lunch in Tiger Leaping Gorge, and the next day to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. She was excellent, a pleasure to have her company for these trips. She was knowledgeable, friendly, very flexible ( for example giving us more time in certain parts such as Blue Moon Valley and Lake when we asked for it) and also extremely helpful when we needed to visit a bank and a mobile phone shop! Elena also offered us a tour of Lijiang's market, and we learned a lot from being with her. She made this part of our visit to China one of the most pleasant, and we will look back on our time with her as a very happy memory. Alyson Burn, UK.

I enthusiastically echo all of the high praise that Elena has received.  It is very well deserved.   I’m a very seasoned traveler, having been to over thirty countries.  Elena is one of the best, indeed, likely the best tour guide I’ve ever worked with.  She is honest, conscientious and detail oriented.  She listened very carefully to our interests and constructed a trip that very well served our needs.  Her English is very good and her manner of communication is lively and engaging.  In additional these very valuable professional traits, her personal qualities make her a pleasure to spend time with.  She is a smart, funny, kind and lively person who is genuinely interested in getting to know people from around the world and learning about the places they come from.  My wife and I greatly enjoyed getting to know her and would gladly travel with her again.  I recommend her unconditionally.

Elena was simply wonderful.  My friend from college just got his PhD and had just gotten married, so he, his wife, my wife, and I all went to Yunnan to see it.  It was my friend's first time to China, and my first time to Yunnan.  Elena helped us every step of the planning, giving us great advice on what was really good, what was just touristy, how expensive things would be, etc.  We did stops in Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang.  She arranged for a more local guide ot meet us in Kunming (the also-fabulous Tina), and then met up with us herself in Dali at the train station.  Every moment was clearly about making sure we had a great time, and she did a great job.  We ate some of the most interesting food, in the most local possible places.  She also knew a lot about all the nature around us, pointing out interesting plants and such as we went hiking in Tiger Leaping Gorge and other places.  She was also able to accommodate some of our physical issues and didn't overly push us.  It was the perfect vacation for us, thanks largely to Elena.  

We are an expat family of 4 who live in Hong Kong and travelled to Lijiang and Shangrila for a week end of April 2015. 

I'm so pleased we had Elena as our Tour Guide because she speaks English fluently with an extensive vocabulary and is easy to understand.  Elena is very knowledgeable in her trade and provides a much-needed filter to weed out activities which you might think you like but in fact, do not meet your needs. Because she is a good judge of character and needs, she recommends what is right for you and therefore you avoid wasting time and money and at the end of your holiday, you have all good experiences only.

Her narrative on the Naxi, Bai and other tribes and peoples and regions, Chinese culture and customs, festivals and foods - were all pedagogic and interesting. She paces herself well and gets the right balance in how much she speaks and interacts with you and your family and how much she lets you be in silence or between yourselves to appreciate your surroundings quietly or intimately. 

As she loves nature and animals, and as our kids also do - we spent a lot of time with the wild animals, touching them and even feedling them - that was so remarkable! Amazing connection with the land. 

What impressed me most was Elena's natural ease and grace as a person. You sense that there is no dishonesty in her, no falsehood, and that within is a wonderful, humble and peaceful soul which is rare to find these days. She's real.  

Elena's gentleness and ability to bond with our family and especially with my young kids was much appreciated. She was very generous in sharing her walnuts and snacks with us (and vice versa), my daughter used it mostly to feed the chipmunks in the Pudacuo Park (very very beautiful, a must-see). Elena also went above and beyond her role as a Tour Guide and brought some ancient Chinese natural fruit remedy for coughs for my husband who was coughing quite a bit. 

I really felt that she was looking after us, not just as her job as a Tour Guide, but that she took us under her wing to make sure all was ok for the whole duration of our time together, advising us to drink sip water often, how to dress for the next day given the destination etc. In Shangrila, when I said I had a headache and was feeling very tired, she took me to a Chinese pharmacy to get some high-altitude Chinese medicine which instantly reduced my symptoms. This was quite a miracle! Otherwise I would have suffered for 3 days...

I would definitely recommend Elena to anyone who's looking for a Tour Guide in Yunnan and the other regions she serves. Her fees are reasonable compared to others (I had checked out 3 in total) and the car/driver she got was very comfortable with seat belts (very important because many cars/7 seaters which are cheaper do not have seat-belts), air-con, and large comfortable cushioned seats. 

Thank you Elena for taking such good care of us!