Oh how we love Laos already. We are back in Huay Xai (border town in Laos) after spending 3 days and 2 nights doing the Gibbon Experience. Aside from the diving we did in southern Thailand, this was the most incredible experience we have had yet. If anyone out there is planning a trip to Laos, this is a MUST DO.
The Gibbon Experience provides an opportunity to swing through the jungle canopy (like a gibbon) using a series of zip lines. As if that isn't cool enough, you also sleep and eat in treehouses, getting in and out of your home via zip line. After a 2-hour drive and an hour hike into the jungle, we were given harnesses and taken by our Lao guides to our first zip line. Hundreds of feet about the jungle floor, we clipped our harnesses into a cable and soared through the sky, screaming and laughing with fear and exhilaration (you should hear Tyson yell like a school girl at an N'Sync concert.) The feeling is indescribable but we think our guide Juning put it best when he said the experience is "the best kind of scary."
Somehow, we were lucky enough to wind up in the newest and nicest treehouse: Treehouse #7. We shared the treehouse with 3 other travelers who let Tyson and I have the very top floor for our bedroom. We had a toilet and a shower on the bottom floor where we could wash the sweat of the day away (with only an open-air wooden lattice floor separating our toes from a 100-foot drop below) while staring out into an endless expanse of untouched rainforest.
The best part of the Gibbon Experience is the justification behind it. The experience takes place in the Bokeo Nature Reserve, which is a 100,000 hectare area of rainforest in north-central Laos. Although the area is designated as a nature reserve, it is a reserve in name only; the government does not provide any funding to maintain the protection of the park and prohibit poaching. The money from the Gibbon Experience goes towards the conservation of this wilderness area, paying wages for forest guards who patrol the park boundaries with AK-47s (which we saw first-hand), and providing jobs for local villages and greater financial incentive in protecting the forest rather than destroying it.
In addition to the incredible time that we had zipping through the trees, one of the highlights of this experience was spending time with our two guides, Jai and Juning. Both are Hmong, an ethnic minority hill-tribe with villages in Laos, Thailand, China and Burma. They practiced their English, we practiced our Lao, and we all laughed alot over card tricks and songs. We learned that they each came from large families who lived in villages over 3 hours away; that they work every day, with no vacations; that they make $3/day working for the Gibbon Experience and that the money goes towards living expenses and paying for school for their siblings. It is a different life than anything we know and we were very grateful to be a part of it for a few days.
Over the past few days, we have learned that it is very easy for us to be happy as long as we have a few simple things, mainly, safety and good health. It's no different than our friends Jai and Juming. We are all connected in such simple and beautiful ways and I am thankful that we were able to feel that in a treehouse, 40 meters above the ground, in a forest in the middle of Laos.
More photos.
So great to hear about the Gibbon Experience. It sounds fantastic! Now that you both have put illness behind you, hopefully you're able to eat everything in sight!
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