Hanging with the Leeches

  Haing Xai, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Saturday, October 11, 2008

For those that are interested in Leeches life cycle, please go to the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeches

Otherwise know that they are blood sucking parasites that feed off human's feet or legs as they squelch through the mud, and in some cases (for Rob) they feast! As you can well imagine the start of our Gibbon Experience did not quite go according to plan!!!

As soon as we had finished breakfast it poured with rain for a few minutes which was a sign of things to come for day 1.

The road there

The trip there was uneventful apart from the last 15 Km's which made us think of Kevin Melville describing Grosvenor as "Hell this is Remote!" doesn't quite describe where we were. On meeting the guests who had just completed the experience, our thoughts were immediately put on ice as a gloomy bunch warned us of the impending Leeches.

The Team

We had a great group of 6 others to experience the Loas jungle with us including 2 Englishmen recently finished studying, an American living and teaching English in Thailand, a Dutch Journalist, a South African recently finished working at a bear rescue centre in Vietnam and her English boyfriend working at a rescue centre in Thailand.

Before our trek proper started, the heavens opened and we pretty much spent the next 3 hours in and out of panchos, wading through rivers

Ian crossing the river

and sliding through mud. The going was slowed even more as we stopped for regular body patrols to remove any stray leeches that thought the party was on! Luckily for us, the three sections of zip line we took were all in the dry and we could actually look at the canopy below us.Zipping is not for the faint hearted, but Kirsty is petrified of heights and found it sadistically exhilirating!

Rob leaping from the treehouse

The tree houses are superbly situated with breath-taking views. We managed to reach the tree-house before the heavens opened and spent the rest of the evening playing GIBBON (a customised version of Nepali YAK, or more commonly called spoons) hudling over the trap door as palm frond roofs are a bit temperamental in a monsoon. We had regular breaks surveying the roof as massive spiders threated to move in. We had been warned of rats, but their assault luckily didn't come!

Day 2 was started with a swim by a nearby waterfall

Waterfall with Rob

and then a further trek through jungle to a different tree-house. This tree-house had the most stunning views over 3 valleys and plenty of cabling to get there! After lunch we spent the afternoon on a zip-line course threatening to do a time-trial, but the 100m+ climb between cables did put us off somewhat.After an early supper we again had many laughs mostly with the paranoia surrounding spiders plotting against us (unclear if the communists were involved) and further GIBBON. We did plan to get up at 4 the next morning in search of the elusive gibbon but were foiled by dense fog on waking.

We sadly had to say good-bye to the stunningly beautiful Bokeo nature reserve without any gibbon spottings but managed to have a good hour sailing through the trees, as can be witnessed from the video-clip . The experience was great, leeches, spiders, mosquitoes and rats aside. Zipping through the jungle top is unforgettable and living in a tree-house a childhood dream. We think if we were to do it again we would do the Classic option as you are more likely to see Gibbons, but then don't have as much jungle experience. We both would strongly recommend it!

Our plans then took a diversion. We did think of taking the slow boat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, but were hearing some nagative things and that you were trapped in a tourist hell in an enclosed space pretty much for 2 days. we decided to be adventurous and set off for another river course to Luang prabang. We even managed to connect with the right buses, reading frantically what we could about our route on the bus. Unfortunately the bus trip would have dropped us off at 2 in the morning in a sleepy hollow town and we risked having to fork out on an expensive charter.

So now we find ourselves in a wooden hotel in Luang Prabang after a 13 hour bumpy winding bus trip with countless options ahead of us...