Crazy biscuits
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2007
1
65
104
Trip End
Dec 06, 2008
Houy xai,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Huoy Xai is the starting location for the 2 day 'slow boat' trip that peddles down the murky forest laden mountain banked Mekong River. It's also the port of departure for the low key and not so touristy adventure called 'The Gibbon Experience'.
ducks in the village
Not to be mixed up with the cheap rip-off in Chiang Mai called 'The Flight of the Gibbon'. The gibbon experience is the toughest adventure I have undertaken in a long time and it wasn't helped by the fact that the amount I ate in the two days prior to the trek and on the three days of the trek wouldn't even interest a mouse if it saw it on a trap. And to add to that what did go in came out at lightening speed after creating woeful havoc in the poor tummy by the means of vicious cramps. Enough shite talk.The Gibbon Experience, well firstly I didn't see any Monkey Gibbons, heard a few though but that didn't take from the experience. Neither did the fact that rats ate my mosquito repellant my bag and my shorts on the first night in tree house one which was as a point of interest 40m off the ground in a tree. The poisonous green 6/7 foot long snake in tree house 5, the numerous leaches I pulled off my legs, the shin deep mud and testing terrain and the 6 to 7 hours treks into and out of the location didn't make for a poor experience either. In fact they added to the mental ness of it all but the two most bizarre things are the feats of engineering in building the tree houses (tree house 5 the bottom of which was 45 m off the ground) and the erection of the zip lines. The tree houses are self explanatory; a house built in a tree. The zip lines on the other hand, well imagine flying over a forest 150 feet above the ground, well that's it. There are steel cables attached to trees up to 360m apart on the banks over huge valleys, gravity fueled
GARR..
. You wear a harness hook yourself up, bugger to health and safety and any sort of regard to life as you know it, you launch yourself into the air and off you go. The thrill I just couldn't try to explain, it's fantastic especially when one line ends you up in a huge tree you drop down to another rickety platform just below and you can launch your self in another direction on another death defying stunt. I'd recommend defiantly but in the dry season where the trekking is a mere 1 to 3 hours max and there isn't mud holes that could be knee deep and there's more of a chance to see some Gibbons in the morning as there isn't the same chance of having a fog sitting on the forest at dawn. -One village we passed on the trek to the tree houses was just way way far out there. The local kids running around naked, washing themselves in the river. Chickens turkeys pigs and cattle roaming freely among everybody making there own way and the houses are the most fundamental and basic of construction mainly from bamboo wood and palm leaves for the roof.
-The road we drove initially before starting the trek (between Houy Xai and the start of the trek) had bits missing on the way back. There are land slides on a weekly basis here during the rainy season. A right mess let me tell you. Actually the country of Laos is far from what we consider civilisation as we know it, the only reminder is the white dashed tarmac strip that you travel on but which is continuously hampered by a insistent stream of ducks geese turkeys chickens goats cattle buffalo mopeds cyclists naked children two wheeled tractors and what not crossing it every 50 to 100m. Along with the missing bits on the raod and a crazy driver a few heart testing moments are inevitable.
