Laos....... the gibbon experience!!!

  Vientiane, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Hi... it's been a while; we blame it on a lack of decent internet access (a little bit of laziness too.)

We're actually writing from Siem Reap in Cambodia, off to see Angkor Wat tommorrow..... but thats another story, let's talk about Laos....

We had one major plan on our itinerary: 'The gibbon experience'. Acting on a tip given to us by a Swedish couple in Myanmar, we checked out the site and, within about 2 seconds, decided we were doin' it!
What the hell is the gibbon experience? You may ask. A gibbon is a type of monkey

01 Gibbon

and a gibbon experience is living like a monkey.... no, I'm not talking about leaving the bed unmade... I mean staying in tree houses 45m off the ground

03 Luke and treehouse

and cruising through the jungle on zip lines up to 100m off the ground. Sounds cool huh? It was damn cool!

The Journey:
From Chiang Mai it was a 6 hour bus ride to Chiang kong on the Thai/Laos border. The following day we crossed the Mekong into Laos and stayed the night in a very ordinary border town named Huay Xai - we payed our 5000 baht ($185.00 A.U) each at the gibbon experience office and took a 4 hr pick-up over a very dusty road (we cringed every time we passed another vehicle) which brought us to a small village bordering the Bokeo Reserve.

The Experience:
2hrs trekking with a local guide brought us to the main tree house (45m off ground) where we received a very brief run down on how to use the Zip lines, we also spent some time playing with some very cheeky monkeys.

12 Luke and the monkeys

Another 2 hrs trekking brought us to our tree house which we were to share with two others: Chris and Lee for the first night. Located near a beautiful water hole, which Chris and Luke had a quick swim and bath in, the tree house was very basic; about 30m off the ground, no toilet or running water - we had to use the zip lines to relieve ourselves in the jungle which was kinda scary at night. Being two couples we were provided with two double mattresses with mosquito nets, not much privacy but we really enjoyed Chris and Lee's company ... no problems!

We spent most of the second day zipping through the jungle.

04 Wye on zip

There was about 10 zip lines, not including the ones to and from the tree houses, our favourite was one that spanned a valley! A distance of 400m and over 100m above the ground, the view was amazing and one gained quite some speed over that distance which was a bit of a rush!

We moved to a different tree house on the second night - this one had toilet and shower!

07 Luke washing the dishes

- we were a lot closer to real gibbons this time, we could hear them singing early the following morning, at about 7:00 a.m we took a short walk and came accross a family of 6 gibbons - it was really amazing seeing them swing from tree to tree at distances of up to 20m through the air!

Unfortunately $185.00 only gets you 2 nights, for an extra $100.00 you get three nights - not quite within our budget! On the trek out we stopped to play with the monkeys again and this time we also met a bear that has been brought up by the staff, he's only 8 months old but is quite large and gives you a bit of a fright when he wraps his jaws around your leg!!

We took the same pick-up back to Huay Xai where we had left our gear (we found out that we had to travel the same road to get to our next destination, should have brought our bags and cut 8hrs off a very rough ride) and said our good byes to Chris and Lee.

The rest of our trip through Laos was quite amazing but still pales in comparison to what we experienced in the first few days..... we'll let the pics do the talking!

Seeya.