Hot Monkey Love

The Gibbons Experience: We had high expectations before going on this trip for good reasons, anyone and everyone who has done it really praised it. The thought of being dissapointed ran through our heads for the entire 2 hour truck ride into the national forest where our journey was to begin. There was five of us in our group, a couple from Chicago (husband was an Aussie, wife is an American of Latin decent), and a single Singaporean woman in her late 20's.

Once we got to the village/national forest, we had 30 seconds to get out of the truck and start hiking. Amy almost got left behind since she was trying to close her $5 backpack we purchased for the trek from a "Chinese Market" since we couldn't bring along our big bags. The zipper was about to break and the buckles were falling apart (the biggest piece of shit bag in the world, a plastic Wal-Mart bag would hold up better). The guide spoke some eng-ish and once again thought I was from another planet let alone the same country he's from. He hurried us across a little stream and up into the forest. They definitely don't mess around when it comes to trekking, especially since they do it in flip flops 2 sizes too small. Their pace made us look silly and I was beginning to wonder where the fire was. We stopped about 30 min into the hike to eat lunch consisting of premade samich's from headquaters. Curry chicken samich, MMMMMM. I spoke laotion to the guides and it shocked the hell out of them. How did this laotion guy get so big they thought. Finally they got up the courage to ask how many siblings I had and if I ate my family members to get so fat. Assholes!

The rest of the hike was pretty hard, straight up hill for about an hour and my legs were burning. The other couple was kicking our asses pretty bad since they just arrived from a few months of trekking in Nepal and Tibet. Man did I feel out of shape, luckily the singaporean was slower than us ;-)





Once we reached our first zipline, our guide gave us a quick safety check and instructions on how not to die. Off he went, zzzzzsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss across and out of site. "OKAY" was shouted across the canyon and it was my turn. Shit! I dont want to die but it looked so fun. Will the harness hold up my fat ass or should I kiss Amy and tell her how much I love her and to take good care of Louie, say "Hi and Bye" to all my friends and family for me etc. What the hell, WOOOHOOOOooooooooooo and off I went. WHAT A RUSH! I cant describe it any better than the fact that our skydiving excursion a few months ago seems like kindergarten play compared to this rush. Now Amy will tell you her version about pooping and peeing herself on the first zip.

Whatever, I wasn't that scared. The harness and roller looked fairly trustworthy, and the brake made of a bicycle tire...well ok I was a little scared. But the ride was awesome, and so were the next few. It was like the most amazing video game ever, zipping way above the jungle, the shortests zips were like the longest zipline ride you could find in the states. Just the first day was worth the 160 euros each!

After a little more hiking, we took a long zip ride into a huge tree way out on its own in the middle of the jungle. It had a two story treehouse on it about 100 m up, with gravity fed sink and shower (I guess piped all the way from a spring way up in the jungle.) And, most importantly, the best squat toilet in the entire world. I mean, you might actually linger on this squat toilet, yes linger on a squat toilet, to admire the view! Fruits and dinner arrived shortly by zipline (veggies, rice, and some of the pork from the cute little piggies back at the village.) The guides came to hang out (no pun intended) with Sam. They'd never had a tourist that spoke fluent Laotian before and though they spoke enough English to communicate safety instructions ("ored - return - no go!"), they couldn't really converse with the tourists. They were eager to learn about America and all kinds of other things - like the earth going around the sun, not the sun going around the earth. I hate to think what else they learned from Sam's scientific instruction, but at least they got the basics!

The next day one of the guides woke us up early to trek out and surprise some gibbons in their sleeping tree before they woke up. Unfortunately the gibbons seem to be on to them by now and were already gone, doubtless muttering "damn those tourists they get up so early we have to get up at 5 to avoid them!" in gibbonese. We had more rice and veggies for lunch and every meal thereafter, then headed out to the waterfall. Dropping right out of that treehouse in the morning was pretty scary all over again, but zipping through the fog was pretty fun (though wet.)

The next day we trekked to the "waterfall" (a nice cold pool with about a 2 foot waterfall above it.) Somehow we managed to get collectively only one leech; the other group's leech score was much higher so we lost that contest. The zip network around the waterfall blew away the first day's lines. We went around the loop there 3 times for fun, zipping over the river, through the valley, and around again, as fast as we could go. The longest zip is supposedly 1km long and took about 10 guys almost a month to put up! The treehouse that night was not quite as amazing, but did have quite a bit more wildlife. As in, tons of very, very large noisy rats. We devised a variety of clever rat traps involving buckets of rice precariously set on ledges, but the rats were smarter than us and instead ate the food on the dirty dishes and held kung fu rat fights with each other all night, on the floor, the thatch roof, our beds....

The last day we trekked out a different way, showing a different side of the jungle, i.e. clearcut farmlands. It was very beautiful, sunny, and Hobbiton-like though. Then it was another crazy truck ride and back to Houayxai. We were sad to leave and tempted to sneak back in, but in the end decided to head acroos the Mekhong and take the local bus to Chiang Rai in Thailand.