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Published: November 30th 2006
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Sunset in Huay Xai
The night before we left in Huay Zai, Laos.Across the river is Chiang Kong in Thailand. The Gibbon Experience was amazing!! For anyone who is planning on comming this way, it's someting you don't want to miss. It's even worth comming all the way to Asia just to do. On the first day we got picked up in a truck at about 8:00 am and took the truck, which had 9 people in it. It chugged up the mountain for about 3 hours where we got to the village at the base. After that it was 1.5 hour hike, mostly uphill and through rivers to the base kitchen. There we were greeted by a couple of playful monkeys who were jumping on our heads and getting into a lot of trouble. One of them "jack" was playing with the little kitten, although I'm not sure the kitten was having as much fun as he was. There is also an orphaned bear who lives there and can be pretty playful. But unfortunatley we didn't get to see him. We also didn't get to see the orphaned baby gibbon, so I think we'll have to go back to see them sometime. Once we left the kitchen we hiked for a few more minutes then we got harnessed up and
Jack the Monkay
Part of our welcoming crew at the base camp did our first zip, right into the first treehouse. Then there we were sitting 35meters above the jungle. Thats when I began to hope that they chose a sturdy tree to build their treehouses. There were about 15 people in the same house, and it seemed pretty sturdy. I wouldn't want to be the one who put the first plank down while building that thing though. In the first treehouse we got a little more info about the whole Gibbon Experience. Its a business, not a non-profit organisation. But how it works is that they are employing all Lao people to be the guides and to be Guards of the nature reserve. All the money goes into building the treehouses and to employ the people. All the treehouses are situated on the edge of the Bokeo nature reserve so having people to stay in them, and to hike around the edge of the reserve discourages poachers. This way they are pretecting the animals, as well as protecting jobs for the Lao people. In about 6 years they are planning to turn the business fully over to the Lao people once they have them all set up. It sounded like a
View from the Top
This was from our first treehouse pretty good plan, a lot more than we were expecting when we went out there. After the brefing we split into groups and hiked and zipped to our houses. We were in treehouse 3 with one other guy. It was 3 zip lines and 2 hours hike from the first tree house. But the view was amazing, we could see jungle for miles. We watched the sun set, and the guides brought us dinner. After that we were left for the night. It was just us, a couple of candles, and the big drop toilet that didn't leave much to the imagination. Right before we went to bed we decided to look on the roof just to check it out. Thats when we spotted all the HUGE spiders, there were about 20 that we could see. Some were huge and brown, and then the really scary ones were the fairly large ones that were brightly coulored. Probably the poisonious ones!! It wasn't the best idea right before going to sleep. At night we could hear things scurring around the tree house and crawling in the branches around us. The next morning we got up really early and a guide came
to take us for an early mornign hike. All we could hear around us were the gibbons, they made the weirdest sounds. Almost like a synthesizer. We got to do a couple of zip lines, and the largest zip line that they've built so far, it took a whole minute to get across it. It definetly was a good way to wake up at 7am. I think that we were on a gibbon search because the guide kept running ahead whenever he heard one. We could hear them right beside us, I'm sure that they were right above our heads, but we didn't get to see them. After we got breakfast, they sent us out to the jungle by ourselves to find treehouse 4 where we were to stay for the second night. We hiked about a half an hour by ourselves then we ran into a group of people who had a guide and were going to the same place. It was a 2 hour, mostly uphill hike to the next treehouse. Right below it was a waterfall with a big swimming hole. That was our bath and shower for the day. It was really chilly, but refreshing. That
night we had a larger group and all of us just relaxed. Later in the night one of the guides came and we all drank a little bit of Lao Lao (Lao Whiskey) and played cards. The next day it was a 2 hour hike back to the village where we started. It was nice to get back to town to have a proper shower and bed. But I'm sure that it is the only place in the world where you could see the jungle like that!
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