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Published: July 14th 2008
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May 17, 2008 - May 19, 2008
We left Northern Thailand and headed to Laos. Our first stop in Laos was the "Gibbon Experience", which was highly recommended by fellow travellers. We'd been told that the Gibbon Experience is a jungle trek where you live in treehouses and zipline over the jungle canopy. Well, as you can imagine, that was all Chris needed to hear, so we contacted them to get booked in. The office was incredibly unorganized and did not return our emails. We were persistent, though, and finally managed to force a confirmation out of them. This different approach to doing business is exhausting!
We made it across the border into Laos and made our way directly to the Gibbon Experience office. Given our previous sketchy dealings with these guys, we were prepared to get nothing but a blank stare from the girl behind the desk. To our surprise, she looked us up in the
computer and said we were confirmed to leave the next day. We spent our night in town buying snacks and supplies for our trip into the jungle.
The next morning, we met the other travellers who were coming along with us
on the Gibbon Experience. Before we left we watched a very short, very Laos, video on safety (we didn't learn much). From the office, we took a Land Cruiser about 2 hours out into the jungle (we even drove through a river!). We arrived at a small village of grass huts and we were let out to meet our guide who would lead us deeper into the jungle on foot. We walked through a farmer's field, up hills, down hills, and across two more rivers before we made it to the main house and kitchen of the Gibbon Experience. We were all assigned treehouses and given a harness. The harness looked like a rock climbing harness, but with a roller on the top and part of an old bicycle tire attached for the brakes. Maybe it was a little shoddy, but it looked like it would do the trick. Once we were all suited up, we made our way for the first zip line. One by one we zipped away further into the jungle. Early in the journey, we dropped most of the group off at Treehouse 1. This treehouse slept eight people. We forged ahead, with another couple from
the US, to Treehouse 3.
After we left Treehouse 1, we started on some amazing ziplines. Some of them were over 350 metres long and high above the jungle canopy. It really offered some amazing views of Northern Laos if you could contain your screaming long enough to notice. It took us almost about 45 minutes to finish the lines between Treehouse 1 and Treehouse 3, and then we had to hike for another 20 minutes in the pouring rain! We were soaked by the time we made it to the zip line leading into our treehouse.
When we arrived we immediately began to change out of our soaking clothes. Seriously, I'm not talking a bit of rain here. Our clothes were hanging off us because they were so heavy with water. As we started peeling our clothes off we began to notice the downside to trekking around the jungle in a rainstorm ... Leeches! Chris and I ducked into the bathroom and stripped down naked so that we could perform leach checks on each other. Chris had visions of "Stand By Me". We both felt great fear as we turned around spread our bum cheeks and asked,
"Do you see any?". Soaking wet, I lit a cigarette and Chris started burning leeches off of our bodies. Two on me and one on Chris. Thank goodness the cigarette never had to venture near any sensitive places!
Once we were all dry, and our leech bites were healing under band-aids, we were able to check out our new digs. The Treehouses were amazing. Like your wildest childhood fantasy of the treehouse you wanted your dad to build for you in the backyard - only this one was way better. Our treehouse had two double beds with full mosquito nets, a dining/lounging area, a bathroom with a shower, a sink, and a toilet and a kitchen. We also had a cooler full of fresh fruit, snacks and cigarettes provided by the Gibbon Experience. The four of us chatted while munching on Pringles and pineapples and waited out the rain.
That afternoon, we got a few more zips in before sundown, at which point we had to be off of the lines. Each meal is zipped in to you by a guide. We'd open our dinner package to find lots of rice and three separate boiled vegetable dishes. Very bland
food, but lots of it. The four of us ate dinner and drank some wine until about 10 p.m. at which point the rats started to come out onto the rafters signalling to us that it was bedtime for us and dinnertime for them.
Our bed had a canvas mosquito net that we tucked under the mattress. This was to keep out the bugs, obviously, but better used to keep out the rats and snakes. I couldn't believe the sound of the rats on the other side of my canvas mosquito net. This family of rats were squealing, biting, chewing and knocking things over all night. I had to put ear plugs in.
The next morning we woke up to the sound of Gibbons in the jungle ... at 6:00 a.m. The "Soprano" Gibbons make a really nice sound; sort of like a kid making the sound of a race car shifting gears and then making the sound of a police siren (I realize that this description doesn't really help). Our guide appeared while we were still in bed. We were leaving right away to go Gibbon hunting. It was raining out again, so I went to get
This is a MASSIVE snake
It was probably 4 to 6 feet long my already wet clothes from the beams I'd hung them on the previous evening. The damn rats had eaten holes through my t-shirt during their little party the night before. I put it on anyway because I had to save my dry clothes for later.
We walked through the jungle for a little while trying to spot Gibbons. Our guide did find them, but we only saw the rustling of trees. The jungle in this part of Laos is right out of a movie with green palms, Tarzan-like vines hanging from the trees above and literally steam rising from the jungle floor. We saw lots of different types of insects, too many leeches, and a massive green tree snake! No gibbon sightings on the Gibbon Experience, but who needs that when you've got ziplines? We spent the remainder of our time zipping around the jungle, screaming and laughing and playing. Pure childish exhilerating joy!
Between lines you have to walk along the paths and this is where you pick up the leeches. These little jerks just wait for you to pass and as you walk by they latch on to your shoes and then climb up as high
as they please before biting. We were trying to avoid further leech bites by doing periodic checks on the trails. We'd check out our shoes and if we saw one, we'd pull it off (we were wearing gardening gloves for the zipping), roll it up into a little ball and throw it into the bushes. They are really amazing little things, though, because as you stood there doing this, other leeches would start racing towards you and then eventually the one you threw would come back, too. Over the 3 days, I pulled off about 40 leeches from my shoes and nine leeches made it past the check and onto my body. I donated the most blood to the leeches out of everyone in the group. Some people didn't even have one bite!
Bad food, rats, leeches, rain, no Gibbons, severe blood loss - the best time ever!!
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Stephanie
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Strange White Bugs
I believe I found one of these bugs. I was wondering where it was that you saw these bugs?