Go-Go Gadget Gibbons

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I flew to Huay Xai (way sigh, I finally figured out how to pronounce the damn place) Thursday morning. I was a bit frustrated that they tell you to be there 2 hours beforehand, which would be 620AM for my flight and the damn check-in place doesn’t open until 730AM! I could have slept another hour and gotten breakfast in town…but such is life in Laos I am learning. I do manage to get some eats at the airport restaurant…its not really a restaurant but there was a kitchen and they had food so I went to get some scrambled eggs…which apparently is not all that common here. I was welcomed into the kitchen to show the girl what I wanted…worked out well for me.

So flying on these small Lao Airlines planes makes me a tad bit uneasy. However, it was an uneventful ride and I arrived an hour after departure, saving myself the 30-35 hour bus ride. When I got into town I checked into the Sabaydee GH. Sabaydee means Hello. I made my way over to the Gibbon Experience office to check-in and sign my life away. I was SOOO excited to finally be here and to be leaving the next day. I was also excited to see my friend Tom that I had met en route from Hong Kong to Bangkok…he and his best mate, Florian, who flew in to visit him since he had been traveling a year without having gone home planned to meet up with me to do the Gibbon Experience. Unfortunately we didn’t find each other until the next morning but it was a fun “reunion”…it’s funny how you can be so excited to see someone you’ve only known a short period of time…similar with Kirsty when we met up again in Cambodia! I guess even in that short amount of time you form a bond especially with those that you connect with.

Anyway, the rest of the day after I checked in I just meandered, something I am very good at and found myself at a riverside restaurant. Clearly I got myself a banana shake…they are just so damn tasty! The food was average - the mixed vege curry. I watched the sunset and went to grab my Thanksgiving Day dinner. Along the way I met a nice guy from Australia, although French - Antione, who was very sweet and offered to join me for my Indian food Thanksgiving dinner. It was much better than eating alone when everyone back in the states was with friends and family. Didn’t make it a late night and headed back to the GH to get a good night’s sleep.

In the morning I played charades to get some scrambled eggs for breakfast and headed over to Gibbon. I ran into my friend Ellen that I had met in Kratie, Cambodia when she was heading up to Laos. We had been emailing but didn’t think it would work out to meet up again and then in Laos, early that morning, there she was! It’s such a small traveling world…its fantastic! Although she was leaving for Thailand that day. A group of five Aussies that were on my plane ended up on my Gibbon trip (all of whom are currently residing/ working in Vientiane), as were my two German friends, an Italian girl, a Canadian and his Korean girlfriend, and another German and his French wife…me being the sole American. Everyone was amazingly friendly and nice and as always I love hearing about their backgrounds and stories all of which were interesting to learn about.

So for those that don’t know the Gibbon Experience is, in a nutshell and in my opinion, an experience where you get to hike and sleep in treehouses for 3 days and 2 nights. In the mix of this there are ziplines in which you zip from treehouse to treehouse with some hiking in between. The gibbons are not really in abundance (if they are there at all!) and you would be extremely lucky to see one. We did see a squirrel though…and they aren’t like the ones in the states, so it was actually pretty cool to spot it. After a 3 hour ride, half of which is on a road, if you want to even call it that, that was a red dirt bumpy holey path led us to the little village inside the Bokeo Nature Reserve. Here is where I saw a girl wearing a River Vale Soccer tee…I got all excited that someone from a few towns over from my hometown was there too, however she was a brit and bought it in London! We hiked maybe 30 minutes in and picked up our harnesses for zipping. This is where the crazy monkey stays…I think they have adopted him since they call him Jack, but this monkey while at first seemed sweet and nice at first glance turned out not to be as we remet on the way out of the forest…maybe we should have picked up on it when he spit up his banana on Florian. We also divided into our treehouses. Tom and Florian had requested TH2 which sleeps 2 people…TH1 sleeps 6 and TH3 sleeps 4 (there are more THs but this is what our group got). So that brings the total to 12 people, however there were 13 of us. Somehow I was the odd one out and it was either sleeping with 2 couples or 2 German men…hmmmm. Well at least I had made acquaintances with Florian and both he and Tom agreed that I could stay with them…it turned out to be the better call as there were extra mats in TH2 although we didn’t figure that out until night 2 after we had a pretty sleepless night trying to squeeze 3 onto the mattresses. That was super neat. But having a slumber party in a treehouse with two german guys was a ton of fun…especially when they would speak in German…I learned a few words although nothing extraordinary and probably not suitable for public writing! My favorite is han, which is used for anything. I was actually really entertained especially since they both thought that everything the other said was hysterical and couldn’t stop laughing! It was really cute to see them interact…best friends since childhood and they hadn’t seen each other in over a year!

Anyway, we moved along and got to TH1 after one zipline… oh it was SOO cool and there was still so much better to come. The views and the heights you are at are just incredible. Everything is so green and lush in the forest and it was just a ton of fun! A few of us by the end left with Gibbon tattoos…i.e. scrapes and burns and scratches but it was all well worth it. The first day we just played around a bit and hung out in the TH. The THs were pretty far from one another so you couldn’t just pop by and say hi…it was a 20 minute venture to TH1 and 40 minutes to TH3. TH5 was even further but had some of the best ziplines and the longest one as well, although you have to walk back. And because the sun goes down early we were in the THs by 4PM. Tom, Florian and I had dinner delivered to us and we reheated it and drank a bottle of wine in our TH in light of candles, a starry sky and a nearly full moon. We shared stories, chatted, drank and played with hand shadows until I passed out pretty early. I slept well until they decided to retire apparently two hours later.

The next day we were woken, if not already up, at 630AM to search for Gibbons…no luck but this is when we did see a squirrel…far far away. As always, we walked by our “treehouse on the ground” as I called this hut in a moment of a loss for words to get to the zip line to our home. We had breakfast waiting for us on arrival…boiled cabbage…yum. Not. The second night we saw that there were the extra mats and made a third bed which proved to be a successful endeavor.

My only complaints and suggestions would be to have some sort of itinerary…we all felt a little lost and unsure of what to do especially when your guide isn’t fluent in English…and to have a map of the area and where all the zip lines are. But all in all, the three days were great and I would recommend it t anyone - just remember that you are in Laos. Everyone was just all smiles the whole time…how can you not be?!

So Jack, the crazy monkey, has a raw bottom which bled onto a few people he also followed us on our hike out of the forest to the village where he proceeded to terrorize everything and everyone in its sight…the little kids ran off screaming and hysterically crying, the turkeys, the dogs, the horses and yes of course, us.

The drive back was alright. When we stopped for lunch we were all invited to a wedding not too far from there. A Dutch girl was marrying a Hmong guy…I actually saw her and her family was on my flight as well from Vientiane a few days before. I really would have loved to go but we wouldn’t get back til late and I had not yet booked my slow boat ticket for the next day to Luang Prabang. I was kind of bummed about it! Anyway, it was a gorgeous day and we all squeezed into one of these jumbo things…a pickup truck with benches and a covering on the back. I was the last one in and let my feet dangle over the edge and watched the road appear below me and the mountainous scenery in the background. I was fascinated as we drove away by the way the mountains in the background in between the V of the valleys seemed to get bigger despite us moving further away…it was a neat effect…I was dazed watching it…sitting over the edge of the tuk tuk with my feet dangling.

Oh yea, and while I was ridiculously worried about the leeches and stuff and had picked up tiger balm since apparently they don’t like it and went to town spreading it all over my legs and ankles and feet. Strange thing is after all I read and heard about how they covered the ground floor of the jungle, not ONE of us got a single leech on us, actually maybe one or two did but I don’t recall exactly…I just know it wasn’t me! It was surprising although I am not complaining…

When we got back to Huay Xai I settled back into the GH, got my ticket for Luang Prabang and met up with Tom and Flo to have another lunch and send them off…although it won’t be for long. They are both flying out of Bangkok the same day as I am and we should be able see each other the few days beforehand…I then went with Silvia (the Italian) to get a massage at the Red Cross and then we met up with everyone else that hadn’t crossed the river to Thailand for a round of beer and then off to dinner at the Riverside…I got the Pad Thai this time and it was sooooo tasty. I said goodbye to my Gibbon friends to go home and pack and sleep.

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Comments

[Erika]

Tom...
is cute and seems really nice! Are you bringing him back to the states??