More than Pad Thai: Laos - "The Gibbons Experience"

Just got back from ‘The Gibbons Experience’ – a 3 day, 2 night, 1 monkey, 1 cat, 4 new friends, loads of cabbage “jungle trek” through central Laos. It was amazing!

Carlyn and I had been looking forward to (or dreading) the Gibbons Experience ever since we signed up for it – truthfully, reviews were mixed and caused some justifiable alarm (will there be leeches? How big will the spiders be?!). That said, we both agree the adventure wildly exceeded our expectations on many fronts: food, friends and of course…killer ziplining courses.

We started our adventure on Sunday afternoon with a 3 hour drive from Houyxai (a sleepy border town in Laos) to the Bokeo National Preserve (a 184,000 hectare gibbons monkey and wildlife reserve). 16 of us piled in 2 pickup trucks for a scenic, yet bumpy, ride through rural Laos. On the drive in, Carlyn and I met 2 awesome couples - the Great Scotts: Naomi & Drew and the Globetrottin' Brits: Cliff & Joyce - with whom we’d hang out with over the next few days.

After dividing up into 2 “camps” of 8 people for the adventure, we set off on a 3 hour hike/zip-line tour to our first tree house – a double decker treehouse perched 75 meters up in the canopy of the rainforest! We had an incredible view of the valley and could access 5 different zip-lines around the canopy tree tops. Unfortunately, upon arrival our tree house was infested with bees (Carlyn’s fashion-forward bee suit came in handy), but after the sun went down, the bees & critters subsided and we were able to enjoy a great sunset and some wonderful Lao food (zip-lined into our tree house by our guide – Khampi).

On Day 1 – we also spotted our first and only monkey of the trip! A black monkey with a white belly and white face. He was swinging through some tree about 50 yards away from our hut…pretty neat!

On Day 2 – we left our abode shortly after breakfast and hiked 2 hours to a shallow waterfall with a great swimming pond and rope swing. After a quick dip, we enjoyed another Lao lunch of rice, cabbage and greens before trekking the final 1 km and zip-lining across 2 traverses into our second tree house – a far more comfortable and bee-free hutch on the edge of a valley. While Carlyn stayed in to soak up the view, I went exploring on some of the high ropes courses. We had a great dinner with our new friends and fell asleep around 9pm – exhausted from a long day of adventure.

This morning, we trekked out of the reserve and drove the 3 hours back to town. After a much-needed shower (we stunk horribly after 3 days!), we had a great dinner with some new friends and spent the night playing cards and drinking some beer. Life is grand. Tomorrow, we head out on a 2 day boat trip down the mighty Mekong River to Luang Prabang…our final stop in Laos.