The coolest 3 days of my life!

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Helllooo!!

Well I only have a few things to say about the 2 day (19 hours) slow boat down the Mekong river.......a church somewhere is missing a whole lot of pues.....the wooden benches were impossibly comfortable and at a 90 degree angle.....and although very scenic it was like being on a tredmill for 2 days because you know your moving but the scenery remains exactly the same. "oh look....another green mountain!" It's on my list of things i'll be doing only once in my lifetime! If i didn't have a flat ass before this...I definately do now! And in true Adele fashion I ate all of my food for the day before 12 noon and we still had 6/7 hours to go!
So that was a verry looong 2 days!!

We arrived in Huay Xia a very small city across the river in the north from Thailand to pay for our 3 day jungle excersion! And then the next morning we were off. It was literally the coolest 3 days of my life and it will be hard to top!
Started off with a 2 and a half hour ride in the back of a truck (with benches) down a dirt road holding on like a monkey and felt like a bouncy castle without the soft landing.....had to walk 20 minutes to the pick up on the other side of this small river. It had been raining off and on so the road was a mess....there was 15 of us jammed into this jeep......and when stuck we had to all get out and push (mud flying in your face...just the start of my dirtiness) Took an hour or so with a very skilled driver and sliding all over the place. Hiked through little rivers and farms and up and up and up into the rainforest to get harnessed up. There was also a cheeky monkey there that like to sit on your head and bite your fingers and touch your mouth (ick) and a gibbon baby ape....gibbons are only found in this rainforest in Laos hence the name of this tour "Gibbon's Experience" This company uses our money to save the rainforest and the gibbons...very good cause! Oh and they also had an 8 month old cub.....but it was getting big and not so playful anymore...more so hungry...little frightened of it actually. So we all put our harnesses on and hiked up more and more to the first zip line! Really nervous...didn't go first! Some of these zip lines were 400m long! So we zipped over to treehouse number one! When I say treehouse I literally mean treehouse! They built a huge treehouse on a huge tree really really high up! Exilerating and quite a rush! We had a quick talk about things and a slight bit of saftey review....and off we went flying through the jungle. We were so high up (the highest zip was 200m) and the view over the canopy of the rainforest and the view over the surrounding mountains of rainforest was unbeleivable....really truley felt like flying. Looking down and all around you there are no words to describe it. We managed to take a view videos so hopefully that can let people see what it felt like or looked like. So far down and such great views everwhere was incredible! We zipped and hiked over to treehouse number 3 (the farthest away...about an hour from tree house 1) where we stayed the night with another couple. We had guides come and bring us dinner and we listened to the rain (only suitable it was raining in the rain forest) Showered 40m up in our treehouse (crucial moment not to fall or drop the soap)...little scary you could see 40m down through the hole in the shower!....enjoyed a hotchocolate by candle light and tried not to concentrate on spiders, bugs and being attacked by monkeys and monsters while trying to fall asleep! The second night we heard a couple of trees falling in the distance and thoughts of spiders quickly turned to the saftey of our tree! But we woke up early and only heard a little bit of the gibbons singing in the morning....they sing as a group every morning apparantly. The guides brought us breakfast and off we went zipping and trekking and flying all day all over the place. Most fun i've had ever! Always a little adrenaline rush when you first push off that everything is in working order....the platforms were almost 200m's high as well so you really had to concentrate on checking everything and not rushing off! I kept thinking of the movie Cliff Hanger!! not a good movie to think of when that high up. Sometimes you didn't quite make it and you had to pull your self the rest of the way to the platform and looking down made you go a little bit faster!
Between the rain in the afternoon and the oil from the zip lines....I was the dirtiest i've ever been in my life....unfortunately I was wearing a white t-shirt and looked the dirtiest of all of us. I thought the obscene smell was coming from the man we were staying with but nope...it was me!! I've never had B.O. before but boy did I ever stink....I didn't think it was possible for girls to smell like that. But because we were getting so dirty we wore the same clothes (which never dried) for 3 days!! YIKES...it was a recipe for B.O.!! Every morning got more and more painful to put on stinky wet clothes!!
That afternoon the rain started and never stopped!! So we woke up and still raining we had to hike dangerously back to tree house number 1....amazingly I don't know how I didn't fall! They gave us special shoes designed for mud with suction cups on the bottom. But since it was raining you had to zip through the mist and dissapear for 200m into the clouds....double cool! Soaking wet and knowing what was ahead we had to drink 2 cups of strong coffee. Since it had been raining for so long they told us we'd have to hike out and the car couldn't make it!! So we hiked through the mountains to get to the first village...had my first encounter ever with a leach!! EWWW!! It was between my fingers and I couldn't get it off and I jumped around and screamed like a little girl....still gives me the creeps to think about it. Pouring down with rain....everything was drenched to the bone....we had to cross the river with water up to our waists....double UGH! Found a leach in my shoe again! And this is where we got dropped off the first day....but no car this time off we went hiking directly uphill for an hour and a half when the car dropping off new people sped by....jumped for joy and we all waited for the driver to come back and pick us up. We still had to walk up all the hills though because of the mud and rain. It would have taken us 6 hours with no car so thankgod it came for us! That was the end of my 3 day workout!
Then again slipping and sliding for another 3 hours back to town. Craziest 3 days ever!
Had a HOT shower and something besides rice to eat and enjoyed a sleep in a spider free room!
Today we crossed the river into Thailand (still pouring with rain) and we're waiting for our overnight train to Bangkok!! I need a beach soon because I'm still not feeling clean!

Everybody needs to find a way to do the Gibbons experience....its absolutely amazing!

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