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Hello!!
How are you all? Well I hope? I hear you had lovely bank holiday weather, so I hope you all took full advantage of it and now have tans to make me jealous (it's rainy season here again so wouldn't be hard!!)
What have I been up to since I last wrote I hear you ask, well here goes....!
I have spent the last month traveling through the beautiful country of Laos where the guest houses are run by crazy "mama's" who bustle into your room telling you EXACTLY where you should have put your backpack (and I always move it!) and prod you around to see how fat/thin tall/short you are - I felt a little like an auditionee for Hansel and Gretel!! Unlike Thailand, it really is the land of smiles - unfortunately quite a lot of those smiles have no teeth and are full of a weird concoction of chewing tobacco, leaves, and a strange white paste - lovely to look at!! But beggars can’t be choosers!
I started my Laos adventure in one such guest house in northern Laos, a little town called Huay Xai. Most people spend a maximum of
one night there whilst waiting for the slow boat for Luang Prabang so Mama number 1 was very pleased to hear that we would be hanging around for a couple of days whilst we waited for our Gibbon Experience date. After about 10 minutes we could see exactly why people didn't tend to stay for long, it is a tiny little town with one street, a few restaurants and that’s about it so we whiled away the time by breaking out the chess board (knew it would come in handy) and my giggling whilst mama grabbed hold of Emma's arms at every opportunity - "so thin, like fashion lady (cue very small chunky old lady who looked a little like yoda, doing a catwalk impression) ahh (cue more grabbing) eat eat"!!!
So after a few days of impatient waiting we found ourselves in the back of a jeep with 12 other people waiting excitedly for The Gibbon Experience to begin. After about 2 hours of easy driving we were beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about the roads to get there, we'd been told it was a "tough 4 hour drive", just then the driver swerved off
the road, through a river and onto a pot-hole filled steep, muddy clay road -aaahhh this is what they meant! so after a couple of hours of getting to know our new traveling companions very well, by knocking heads, nearly landing on laps etc we arrived at the start point for our hike to the jungle.... it was a tough 1 1/2 hr walk (I'd like to point out at this point that I had a chest infection and wasn't just being a wimp - using half a lung in the jungle isn't fun!) until we reached a kitchen right in the middle of no-where. As soon as we got there, out popped a baby black Asiatic bear to greet us - he'd been found by the guides abandoned by his mum and they'd rescued him. At first he seemed very cute, only 4 months old and attached himself to a girls arm and started suckling like cats do if they've been taken away from their mums too soon - ahh how cute I thought. Unfortunately he didn't share the same sense of affection towards me, after being removed from the girl so we could harness up he got a
little grouchy and my leg got in the way - not for suckling this time but for biting - I know he is only 4 months old but it was quite painful!!!
So after my bear love bite it was time to leave. We stepped into our harnesses, just like climbing harnesses but with one rope for 'safety' and another with a small piece of bicycle tyre attached and trampled up the final climb to our first zip wire. After being told how to attach the safety "safety first”! and other rope we were set to go, only slightly concerned that the small bike tyre was in fact our break and only method of stopping! So hesitantly, one by one we stepped off the first platform and whizzed across the tree line into tree house number 1. As it turned out this was a baby zip, only 50 metres high and about 100m long, and as we'd later find out pretty much the only zip that required braking in order for you not to zip straight into the tree trunk!
After deciding who was staying there (me and em had no choice, due to being so British and
Zipping like a pro!
1 handed, how cool am i?!not wanting to upset anyone!) Emma and myself, a German couple, and an Israeli couple remained in No.1 whilst the others zipped off to find Tree houses 2 and 3. We soon joined them in the zipping frenzy, quickly loosing our fear of being responsible for attaching our own safety equipment and soon we were pro's, zipping no-handed (well, sometimes!) going backwards, pushing off trees with your feet in a desperate attempt to make it all the way across so as to avoid the annoying and slow 'pulling yourself in backwards technique’ which seemed to be a necessity on many of the zips (thank god for cheap gloves, or your hands get black in seconds!)
Finding that it got very dark by about 6.30 we set up our lanterns and settled in for the night, with at least a couple of us hoping that the storm in the distance would bring strong winds and a credible excuse to zip at night (evacuation being the only reason we were given to break the golden rule of no night zipping!) After several hours of being grilled by the Israeli couple on everything from the validity of our royal family to the
Is that a Gibbon tail i see?
well, according to Emma but...?! best way to eat sunflower seeds (?!), and lots of screaming as various huge bugs and spiders decided to join our party under the lanterns we decided to go to bed (about 9pm I think!) to listen to the sounds of the jungle and be up bright and early for the Gibbons singing.
After an amazingly restful nights sleep (big duvets and everything!) we awoke at about 5 am to the amazing sound of the Gibbons calling. It was crazily loud, and despite our initial late night scepticism that it would just be the guides with a loud speaker - we were suitably impressed. The next minute we felt the tree house shaking as in flew one of the guides, ready to take us on our first Gibbon hunt. Harnessed up and ready to go, the German couple zipped first. Just as I was ready to go Asaf called that there were Gibbons, right by our tree house, in all the excitement I let go of the break and off I zipped, into the misty morning and away from the swinging gibbons - typical!!! Despite our efforts to find some more I think we weren't as quiet as we
All geared up ...
and looking scared!! needed to be and we came back disappointed (except Em, Asaf and Yara who'd seen them from our home!)
We'd soon discovered that apart from in the mornings, the guides were pretty hard to motivate into taking you into the jungle. As everyone was meeting at our tree house for lunch at 1 and we had a few hours to kill, we decided to take a trip out to tree house 3 and have a little look. On our way we picked up one of the Aussies staying in the second tree house who readily agreed to come on our 'short walk' not even bringing his shoes. Anyone who knows me probably knows that my 'short walks' rarely go to plan, and this was no exception! After meeting the residents of T.H.3 they told us there was a great zip to the right of the T.H that we had to check out, so off we went in search of the new zipping experience. We sent Emma off into the distance (despite there being no green tape on it to say it was ok to use, oh and her incredible fear of heights - hjow nice are we!) and could
hear her zipping, and zipping, and zipping (the trees covered our view after about 10 metres) After what seemed like an eternity, and just as we were about to assume we'd sacraficed her to the rare jungle tigers we heard the faint "o.k." signal and off I went.
It was the longest zip I have ever been on, this was the elusive 1km zip, 150m up, with beautiful views and plenty of time to enjoy them, it was amazing, that is until i saw that somehow a fat branch had covered the line, there was nothing for it, i was just going to have to close my eyes and hope for the best (unfortunately also the technique i use when driving, and probably the reason we haven't hired out and moto's since we've been here!)Luckily with a bit of wriggling and one outsteched 'kicking foot' i managed to escape with just a few cuts and scrapes! After we were all across, feeling very pleased with ourselves we realised one thing, they hadn't told us how to get back! After a lot of searching we found another zip, and although it appeared to be heading in the wrong direction, we
thought it may traverse the valley and another zip would take us back to the right place (yeah, like we're going to be that lucky!), so off we zipped again, into the unknown....
After about 2 hours of walking on the other side of the zip we figured we'd gone quite wrong somewhere! At the sight of another line we were very relieved, it was another Tree House, must have somehow made it back to TH3, yay we're saved - until we zipped into the TH and realised it was number 5 the furthest T.H in the forest and quoted as being a 4 hour walk from the others!! Luckily for us there was a guide there, not so luckily he was off for lunch and didn't feel like accompanying us back, so with sketchy directions ("follow the valley until you get to a river, cross the right hand stream, when the path forks follow the up up up until you get to T.H 3") and feeling like the famous 4 we set off through leech infested jungle (the poor aussie guys feet were covered - didn't moan once!) until we reached the stream. After balancing over a single
bamboo pole bridge we got to the fork and the "up up up" and my god was he telling the truth! after about 2 hours (and having lost the Israeli couple who despite being just out of the army, sat down and sulked that they wouldn't go any further) and one of our 'team’ having been kissed by a snake who poked his head out of a piece of bamboo right by his face, we finally reached the top, very hot, very sweaty and leechy, but super pleased with ourselves!! by the time we got back to our Tree house, we were slightly disappointed not only that there wasn't a concerned welcoming committee (we were 4 hours late for lunch) but also to find that whilst we'd been gone, sneaky T.H.3 had stolen our sweets, bananas and Pineapple!!! So as a cautionary note to anyone who decides to go, if any other Tree house occupants tell you of any amazing zip you just HAVE to see, be suspicious, or take your pineapple with you!!!
The next day, we had more zipping fun but no Gibbon sightings (though again Emma saw the tail of one disappearing as she was closest
Expert!
safety first! to the guide, lucky so and so!) and left around lunch time for our journey back. It was an incredible experience, and probably the best thing I've done on this trip - if you're coming to Laos, go and look for it, its a bit pricier than everything else here, but totally worth it!!
After that incredible detail of 3 days, don’t worry, I wont be doing that with the rest of Laos! I'll even give you a break from reading What Sarah Did Next and leave it until another blog, you lucky things!!
Love you (well, most of you!)
Sarah xx
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Anna Cleary
non-member comment
Zipedy-doo-dah Zipedy-day!
Wow!!!! I literally gasped at my desk when I saw these photos (giving away the fact that I had not in fact retreaed to my desk to finish some paperwork!). This looks absolutely amazing, I simply HAVE to go. By the way, I'll email my intinerary asap! Glad you're both having a wonderful time and looking absolutely glowing. xxxx