The Gibbon Experience

The Gibbon Experience is situated near Hung Xuai which is in the North East of Laos. (Did you know that the reason that Lao is spelt Laos is that the French misspelt it after they arrived here).

Anyway the reason for the Gibbon Experience is to provide a way to protect the rainforest from poachers. The project was started by Jeff, a french climber with a good imagination.

The Gibbon Experience, or the touristy side of it, is a network of treehouses which tower over the rainforest canopy. You travel between the treehouses between ziplines (see pictures) which can get up to a 150m in height.

We arrived into the camp and waited around for 20mins for our guide to arrive. Something that I have to say about Laos, since I have been here all the people I have met have been Canadian. So low and behold whilst we are waiting for our guide the people from the previous trip are walking by. The first one says Hi with a Canadian accent, she is from Vancouver, the next 2 our from Toronto and basically all the members apart from 2 are from Canada.... they becoming as common as muck!

Finally our guide arrives and we hike towards the base. Through rivers we wade, the first thing that hits you is the heat, 2 mins into walking (sorry hiking) and beads of sweat are running down my face. The second thing that hits you is the noise from the rainforest, beatles, birds and bugs all making their crazy noises which silence as you walk towards them. It is a fantastic experience.

We arrived at the base camp and met by a baby sun bear (see pic). This bear is 4 months old and a real little fighter. As you play with it would just run back a few steps and then jump you.

Tip: when playing with a bear (whatever type) don' t let them bite you, it hurts!

After a while we donned on some harnasses and walked up towards the first zipline. Walking up was pretty scary and its worse when you clip in for the first time. As you look over there is a treehouse in the distance, which you are supposedly going to. However below is a 50m drop and if you fell then it would instant death. All thats holding you is 2 carabina clips, which funnily enough are made by a company called "SIMOND" (this is my name) - realising that this was a hint that all was going to be ok - I pushed off and slide across the line towards the treehouse. Its an amazing rush as you zoom across. I tried not to look down too much in case I completely freaked out, however when you tell yourself not to do something you always do it, don't you?! So I looked down and freaked myself out a bit. After regaining my composure I pulled myself into the treehouse.

We were met by Liz who was Manchester and told all the ground rules.

An hour later we set for the next treehouse and this is where I am a bit miffed. I was planning to get some video footage going across one of these lines, however on the last day when we supposed to be going ziplining we didn't. So sorry no footage.

The views from a couple of these ziplines are crazy as you go over a valley and look down and across you can see 150m down and then miles across. Its absolutely fantastic, especially as you have the adrealin pumping through your veins from the zipline.

We then hiked for about an hour and half to treehouse 3 and setup camp.

The treehouses are really well built they each have a toilet, shower and running water which is taken from a well. The toilet and shower our known as a long drop which is that the waste material goes down a hole to the ground. Its quite cool watching your p*ss falling into the bowl and then accelerating as it drops out of the hole...

All food was provided and it was really good, the other plus was that you could make 'proper' fresh coffee too albeit with condensed milk, which while it sounds pretty bad.. is nice after a couple of cups.

We sat back took in the views and ate our food to the most fantastic views, then went to bed.

During the night we had a few visitors including a couple of rats which tried to knaw through a rice container and basically just made a lot of noise. Apart from that I slept like a baby.

The next day another hike to treehouse 4 which is some 2 hours away and set next to a waterfall. The day was hotter than the last and it took no time before everyone was hot and sweaty.

The cool thing about this trip was a little baby monkey, 1 year old called SameSein (probably spelt like that!). We were all sat down waiting for the guide and when he turned up, he brought the monkey. The monkey looked up, saw me and came running up, jumped up and then fell asleep in my lap. I liked this monkey!

After an hour and a half, with monkey sat on shoulder we arrived at the next treehouse. Dumped all our stuff and went down to the waterfall.

The waterfall was fantastic (sorry no decent photos as you had to swim to get to the good parts) and after some dodgy rock climbing we reached the top. Its called a tiered waterfall as its made up of a number of parts ... We did see some jumping fish going up the waterfalls to lay their eggs at the top (I guess).

And so to the end of the Gibbon Experience... after another 2 hour walk we arrived back to where we started.

After the last river crossing, I took my shoes off to check for leeches and low and behold there was this black thing on my leg. I thought it was a bit of twig, but the thing was pretty damn huge - I realised it was a leech (it was pretty damn big) grabbed a lighter and burnt the little **stard to a mere crisp. The wound bled quite profusely for about 4 hours due to the anticoagulant which they secrete when they bite you.

Anyway I shall leave you with some photos....