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Huay Xai
Arriving to the Laos border by boatLaos and The Gibbon Experience (Huay Xai)
Heading north from Chiang Mai, I made my way to the Thai/Laos border. Once I left the Thai town of Chang Khom, I entered Laos at Huay Xai. The Mekong river creates a natural border between Thailand and Laos, so basically all you need to do to cross is obtain your exit stamp in Thailand, hire a boat to take you across and obtain your entry stamp at the pier in Laos.
Huay Xai is pretty much what you would expect from a border town- not impressive at all. Very small, not a lot around. Apparently the bank and its ATM machine had been installed the day before I arrived. So, I was basically walking around with nothing to do when I came upon the location for the infamous Gibbon Experience. I had heard of this from other travelers as far back as Malaysia and was pretty interested in checking it out.
Here’s the website:
http://www.gibbonx.org/
And now here’s my side of the story…..
Ok, I’m not going to say it was terrible, or awful, but well, I didn’t see any wildlife, let alone Gibbons! We went via bus to
Huay Xai
View over the river from the rooftop terrace the little village outside the Bokeo Nature Reserve. The G.E. organizers are trying to educate the locals about how to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. A lot of the national forests and wildlife in South East Asia are endangered by the local villagers because of farming and hunting. For example, the locals still use the slash and burn method to clear land for their agricultural crops. When the resources of the soil have been diminished, they simply move to another area of the forest and clear more and more of it. The forest takes ages to grow back. They also are very poor, so they will eat any animals, reptiles or otherwise that they come across as a means of obtaining protein. This means hunting the animals in the forest, some to the point of endangerment or extinction. Hence the case with the Black Gibbons. They were once thought to be extinct. Now, part of the goal of the project is to raise awareness about forests and wildlife, especially about endangered species.
Once we arrived at the village outside the reserve, we hiked for a short bit, maybe 40 minutes, into the forest and were taken to the tree house.
Not too bad, I thought at first. The tree houses are anywhere from 200 to 400 meters off the ground, affixed in the canopy of the trees. There is a kitchen area and a bathroom. It’s definitely a surreal experience going to the toilet 400 meters above the ground. The toilet was open so the “organic material” just dropped right down to the jungle floor. Ew! And there were tons of bees coming up through the toilet so you had to be REAL careful about that! Who wants a bee sting on their ass (or on their…ahem, uhm, anywhere else)? That would have to be one of the weirder injuries to explain.
Part of the fun of the Gibbon Experience is that you get to use the zip line system to travel within the park. Although, they did tell us a number of times that zipping wasn’t the primary reason we were in the park, so keep the zipping to a minimum. Which I thought was BS. I mean, I wanted to zip like, constantly!
When we arrived our group was split into two. My group stayed in Tree house #1 which was the first tree house one
Huay Xai
isnt it beautiful comes across when entering the forest. After spending some time during the day zipping and trekking (hiking) thru the forest we settled back in the house and dinner was delivered (via zip of course). There isn’t any electricity in the tree houses, so it’s off to bed early. They did give us candles but they burned really fast and we only had a few, so we all just went back to our beds. We had to double up in the beds (“semi-private” accommodation it’s called), and I shared with a girl from the UK.
There was a comment book in our tree house where numerous people had talked about the rats in the tree house- chewing holes in people’s bags, clothes, shoes and even a few bites. Needless to say, this did not sit well with me. The night before I left for the Gibbon Experience, I stayed in a crummy hotel that had rats crawling through the walls and the ceiling all night. I left the lights on while I “slept” although to be honest, I really didn’t sleep because the rats were really loud. So I was exhausted by the time I got to the tree house
The Gibbon Experience
The treehouse of horrors and the prospect of more rats really made me anxious.
At bedtime, we tucked our mosquito net safely under the mattresses on the floor as a precaution against the rats. Thank God these were not the light mesh type of mosquito nets, but rather they were made from thick opaque canvas. They didn’t allow any air to circulate, but better for rat protection-supposedly. The rats were determined to enter into our bed/tent and scratched furiously at the canvas. I’m not going to lie. I was scared and freaked out! I was practically glued to that poor girl from the UK because the rats seemed to want to enter the tent on my side by my feet. She was very brave and hit at the canvas with a water bottle, hoping to scare the little bastard away, but no doing. He was there all night. When we got up at 5.30 the next morning, there were two large holes chewed thru that hadn’t been there the night before. Luckily the rat did not make big enough holes to get thru. Can you imagine if you were tucked into a tent and a brazen rat got in? Trapped in there with
The Gibbon Experience
View from the treehouse it?!?! Needless to say, it was another sleepless night for me.
Early morning, we took a walk through the jungle to find the Gibbons. It may have been early, but nothing wakes you up like a zip thru the jungle mist. Its just amazing. Our guide could hear the Gibbon calls and took us off the trails in hopes of viewing them playing in the treetops. This was actually really hard because the ground sloped down and there wasn’t anything to grab onto. A couple of us slipped and slid down the soil, making a lot of noise which probably scared the Gibbons and any other animals to be seen. I have to admit, I was probably one of the worst ones. I just couldn’t get a grip on anything and slid everywhere- going up and down!
Later, everyone opted to go on a hike to the waterfalls. Except me. The guides said the hike wasn’t easy-it was about 2 hours each way and the waterfall was only so-so. After the morning hiking I figured I would only slow everyone else down and probably hurt myself. God, why am I such a girl sometimes?!?! So instead, I opted
to take the hiking route to tree house #5, which was the less strenuous option. Except that it wasn’t. We got a few zips in, but the hike was pretty rough. And the view was nothing. I couldn’t understand why this was an option. I mean hiking just for the sake of hiking? That’s crazy! :-)
Well, anyway, after a few hours of trekking I got back to the tree house and had a little bit of time to take a nap before everyone came back from the waterfall. They said the hike was rough, waterfall only ok. So I guess I made the right choice. However, on their way back thru the village, they stopped at the kitchen where our food was prepared and asked that the local cat be brought back to our tree house for the night. Great idea! Although the poor little thing must have been terrified at zipping. They stuffed her in this bag with her little head sticking out and when the guy came zipping toward the tree house you could hear “MMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW” all the way. But let me tell you, that tiny little cat was a great mouser. Kept the place guarded
The Gibbon Experience
The sun just setting over the jungle all night. She caught her first just shortly after the sun went down and I guess that put the rest of the rats off because it was locked up tight all night. Finally, I slept more than 5 minutes!
Next morning, 5.30, went looking for Gibbons again, but we quickly lost their calls. They must have been moving pretty quickly because we seemed to be catching up to them, but all of a sudden we could hear that they were quite a bit away. We had time in the afternoon to take a few more zips in and then we headed back. Which was a good thing because the tree house ran out of water.
So, all in all I would say this about the Gibbon Experience. If you’re a real nature person, and love being out in the jungle, don’t mind bugs and aren’t scared of rats- Go for it! I definitely didn’t hate it, but some of it was a bit outside of my comfort zone. Or maybe I was just too tired to enjoy it. Well, the zipping was totally awesome, but it was disappointing not to see any wildlife. All in all, I’m glad
I went. Who knows, maybe if I ever go back to Laos I would try again. But I’d get in shape for the trekking first and definitely pre-order the cat!
That afternoon, our group headed back to Huay Xai. Luckily, someone knew a better hotel to stay in so I had a nice rat free night. The next day, our group plus a few others hopped a bus to Luang Prabang. Now, the preferred backpacker way to get from Northern Laos to Luang Prebang is to take the slow boat down the Mekong river. The trip takes two days, and you stop over night in Pakbeng. I had heard a lot of horror stories about it, and so had the rest of the people from the Gibbon group, so we all decided we wanted to take the bus.
Taking a bus in Laos is in itself an interesting experience. The roads aren’t very good, and neither is the condition of the buses. So, what should have been an already long bus ride was made even longer when our bus broke down with a flat tire. Not once, but twice. And there’s nothing to do but wait until they
can get to a town or have someone come out and fix it. So that was interesting. The country side was beautiful, so at least I got to stop and take some nice, scenic pictures along the way. But it was a long trip to Luang Prebang. We arrived at 4am and had to argue with the tuk-tuk driver to take us where we wanted to go and then wake up the poor lady who ran the hostel before finally collapsing in one of the few available rooms.
Quite an experience, my first few days in Laos…..
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Tori
non-member comment
What a trip!
I just read your blog on the Gibbon experience and it sounds like it was absolutely crazy!!!! Max thought it was so crazy that he drooled like the entire time! haha! Anyway, I wanted to tell you that Chiangmai is the Thai restaurant that I was telling you about near me. When you get back we'll have to go and you can tell me if it's really good. Or maybe you'll be sick of Thai food by then! So, when are you coming back?