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Well sorry for for the lack of updates! Its hard to believe im actually in Sydney writing this and have travelled through Thailand,Malaysia and Singapore since we went to the Gibbons! I know from the emails that Ive had, that you want to see and here more of the fun Im having on this trip. Its unbelieveable how time dissapears when you are having fun there is so much stuff to catch up on so I suggest that you take it in stages!!!
So what can I say about the Gibbons Hmmmn this was only the best experience ever and this was made even more so by the group that we had.
This was what I was looking forward to most in Asia and it did not disappoint. Imagine what it must be like to Zip Line over the jungle canopy at 150m above the ground for a 1000m. Basically you cant its one of these thing you have to do to appreciate it, and its a definite must if you are ever in Asia.
To get to the Gibbons, we had to take a slow boat from Luang Prabang. This is definitely a slow boat 8
hours of traveling per day on the boat gets you to the Village of Huay Xai. This is where the Gibbon Head Office is.
We arrived at 8am in the morning at the Gibbons office after spending a night in a guest house in Huay Xai. We got on to a jeep which would take us to the jungle where gibbons is located after this there would be a 3 hour trek to our treehouse. The journey gave us time to speak to the other members of our group, and exchange the usual experiences so far from traveling and what where we will be going to do in the future. Little did we know that this group of 8 was going to really hit it off in the jungle so well.
We arrived at the Gibbon Jungle village at about 11.30 and proceeded off into the jungle. The initial 45mins of walking was quite easy, we stopped for a bite to eat and water then carried on our way. It was this next section that nearly killed us, uphill it seemed never ending thoughts of oh my god what have I got myself into ran thru my head,
but we soldiered on eventually coming to treehouse number 1's kitchen. they told us we had another 2hrs from here I was really hoping there wasn't going to be much more uphill climbs!
So after leaving the kitchen refreshed with water,we get to our first zip line, a small taster first. We put on our harnesses and went thru the “safety first” and “ok” we were off. (Safety First and Ok were our guides favorite saying and have now become legendary on our travels between the group)
So here we were our first zip buckled up and ready to go, the nerves kicked in but when we left the starting point the fear eased and the views then hit us. It was amazing feeling the sense of freedom was out of this world and we reached the otherside full of smiles and couldn't stop talking about it. We carried on to our treehouse number 4, which we found out was the furthest treehouse. We continued zipping and trekking then hit the big zip line. I really cant explain how good this line was, the view was incredible its one of those things that no matter how many pictures
or videos we took,you have to do it to feel it. Finally we arrived at our treehouse the time was 4.30pm. We were all fairly exhausted but were keen to investigate our treehouse which was our home for 2 nights.
Now the treehouse, has what must be the most awesome shower in the world, basically you can see thru it!!! And when you are standing on it having a shower it makes for an interesting if not unusual expereince as you can see the ground below! The Treehouse itself has fresh spring water feed from a natural spring in the jungle and the water was really tasty, also we should have had a gas stove but ours was missing. We set up out beds and mosquito nets and then sat round our table. Suddenly one of the zip lines into our treehouse starts moving then we can here the sound of the wheels on the zip line. Who is this we were wondering, well it was only supermum!!!! Basically this young Loas women comes flying into our treehouse 8 months pregnant carrying not only our food but also the biggest metal kettle ever of boiling hot water for our
tea and ovaltine!!! It was the most crazy sight so instantly she was named supermum.
So we settled down for dinner well it had to be sticky rice!! as well as some other chicken and vegetable dishes it was really good. We had a couple of games of card and settled down for the night.
Now someone in our group Jan or was it Sana? Anyway Team Holland! Decided that it would be a good idea to search for Gibbons in the morning. Well we all had no problem with this, but the best time to see them? Yep early! In fact 6am, it actually turned out to be earlier if I recall right. And we were woken up with a loud OK!!
Well we went insight of Gibbons they are monkeys if you don't know! Unfortunately we found none, we trekked thru the jungle till 5pm so a mega long and hard day but very enjoyable. We might not have found Gibbons but we did find a baby bear! He scared the living daylights out of me when he crawled over me as we were layed down at one of our covered stops. I thought it
was a baby dog not a bear, its a crazy little thing he likes women breast, like any man I suppose and he took a liking to Amalies! Hes free to roam but always comes back for now as they feed him, soon he will be going to the bear sanctuary in Luang Prabang which is at the waterfall which we visited in the last blog.
So our last day and we went through the jungle on a trek which meant no more zipping, our last zip was the one out of our treehouse. I got up early as needed the toilet, why you might ask am I telling you about me going to the toilet? Well first the toilet isn't really a toilet in the treehouse its just a pan that has a hole that drops straight down to the floor below and is surrounded by lots of bees and second well coming back from the toilet I managed to fall over and twist my ankle! Which has some of you know normally means I cant really walk, so a trek of 2 and half hours on a twisted ankle was the last thing I wanted. Anyway I
got thru it not too bad really and the guide sorted me out with a homemade walking stick.
So the end of probably the best 3 days experience ive had, and my thoughts are this place is amazing and a must see, and if you get a great group of people then the experience will be even better.
Thanks must go to Team Gibbons who really made it an experience to remember!!!
OK!!
Eduardo the coolest Canadian/Mexican whom we had any many drinking toasts to over the next couple of weeks! Hopefully catch up with you in Canada next year buddy.
Jan and Sanna two of the most funny dutch people, you can meet. Jan was so funny when he was drunk, poor Sana how do you put up with him! They made us laugh so much.
Amalie and Jose two of the coolest girls you'll meet from Denmark and if Carlsberg made girls these two would probably be the best in the world!!
And lets not forget to give Team England a pat on the back for always going the furthest on the zip line!!!
Remember Safety First!!!
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Twitchey
non-member comment
Nice Turkey
Nice touch about the turkey, only you could come up with that, it made me chuckle (for quite a while). Pictures and place as ususal look amazing, think if I had been there I would have kept the bear as part of the team, you can train them you know, I have seen it on Gentle Ben!! Anyway looks like you dont need to remind you to have fun, your certainly doing that... Keep Safe (safety first...lol) Happy Birthday for next week if I dont see you online!!