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Published: February 22nd 2007
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Check out my video at the top of the page (thing that looks like a film strip)
Sun 18th Feb
Time for the Gibbon Experience and the reason I spent 2 days on the boat. This was recommended to me by Pete-Thanks and I have stolen a bit of his blog to explain what it is. (http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Laos/Bokeo-Province/Bokeo-Nature-Reserve/The-Gibbon-Experience/blog-86115.html)
Ok, I'll start off by giving you a little background on The Gibbon Experience as an project. It is set in the Bokeo Nature Reserve. The reserve is located around 3 hours by car north of Huay Xai very close to the Burmese border. It is 153,000 hectares of dense jungle and mountains ranging in height between 500m and 1,500m. The reserve acts
as a home to thousands of species of wildlife, including tigers, bears, black gibbons and also populations of migrating buffalo and elephants. A number of factors are destroying the rainforests of South East Asia and its resident wildlife. These include logging, poaching and slash and burn farming. The primary aim of the project is to protect the forest and a truly unique method of achieving this goal was thought up. With the help of the local people an organisation named Animo set about building treehouses nestled 40 metres above ground in the branches of Strangler Fig Trees and interconnecting them with a network of cables used as zip lines. It was named 'The Gibbon Experience' on account of a large population of Black Gibbons in the area and people were invited to pay money to spend time in the treehouses and use the zip lines to explore the jungle and search for wildlife. All of the money that is made by the project is immediately re-invested back into the reserve. The villagers (mostly ex-hunters) were recruited as guides to take visitors trekking through the jungle, or as forest guards to protect the ecosystem from its many threats. In time, when the project is fully established, it will be handed back to the local villagers for them to run by themselves.
One thing that we really liked about the Gibbon Experience is that it is all about the forest. It is by no means a profitable organisation, and unlike many other trekking tours, they actively battle to keep their project out of books such as the Lonely Planet and prefer to rely soley on word of mouth between people
The treehouse from the waterfall
and the toilets were on the same level as the waterfall so it was a trek just to go to the toilet. traveling throughout South East Asia. This has helped it remain a much more ‘real’ jungle experience as it has managed to avoid commercialisation. It is also something that you will never experience anywhere else, not to mention shit loads of fun!
Looking at his blog you can tell the difference he experiences to me- I had it easy. As it is now the dry season we didn’t get stuck in the mud on the China-Thailand road but it is certainly still a bumpy ride.
There were 2 options and I chose the one where you switch treehouses and trek to a waterfall. This meant there was less zip wires and the waterfall wasn’t an impressive one. So I think I should have done the other option. I think it was one of those experiences that got built up to much before I did it so it was a little disappointing. Saying that I am really glad I did it and did have a great time. I’m really glad it means the forest is protected and staying that high up is spectacular. We have no idea how they get the cables up therein the first place.
I met
the rest of the group at 8.15, Mika and Ruben from Holland and Sophie and Freda from Sweden and we started on our bumpy ride to a little village where we began our treck/zip to the first treehouse (No5). It was very posh with a toilet in the corner and a penthouse bedroom upstairs.
Tuesday morning we were woken at 6 to go hunting for the gibbons. The toilet weas needed as others in the group had dodgy stomachs so we didn’t get away as quickly as our guide Tu would have likes. This meant we walked really fast (with me trailing behind). We did spot a few monkeys but no Gibbons. Supposedly we heard them but unless you were right next to Tu you don’t get any of the information about what you could see or hear.
After breakfast we trekked to the waterfall treehouse (No4). Swimming in the waterfall was freezing. We had the afternoon free and as there were no other zips close buy I did the 2 to and from the treehouse 10 times!!
Ofcourse time was passed playing cards. And just before bed the 5of us had an expedition to go to the toilet (which
was down by the waterfall) which meant we had to do the zip in the dark (not normally allowed).
Wednesday morning we trekked back to the village and got the bus back to Houay Xai where I booked into a place with a TV and vegged out for the afternoon.
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Funky Gibbon
We're the Goodies How do you do? We've just been down to the zoo We saw a monkey in a cage Doing a dance That could be the rage It's not hard So let's all do the funky gibbon Ooo, ooo, ooo Do, do, do the funky gibbon (The funky gibbon) We are here to show you how Ooo, ooo, ooo Ooo, ooo, ooo, the funky gibbon He's just like you So come on and do The funky gibbon now