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Frey Kat Danielle's SEA Travels
At our 3 day 'Gibbon Experience' trek in the Bokeo Nature Reserve (in the North of Laos) we got to live out many a childhood dream... we got to glide on cables across the forest canopy up to 200m off the valley floor, and sleep, shower and play in tree houses 40m high with exquisite views of the ridges and valleys to all sides!
This experience was set up as a conservation project. Here are bits and pieces describing the background of the gibbon experience 'borrowed' from the website: http://www.gibbonx.org/
Poaching, logging and slash-and-burn farming are destroying primary forest and its inhabitants in South East Asia. The Gibbon Experience works closely with the local people in Bokeo Nature Reserve, to transform their economy from one based on slash-and-burn farming, logging and poaching, to one based on long term, conservation focused activity. At present, Lao National Parks have no forest guards for day-to-day protection. Only the forest guards in the Bokeo Nature Reserve receive a salary; fully funded by The Gibbon Experience. They work 24 hrs a day and presently monitor 25% of the 123,000 hectare reserve. From an initial investment of one euro(!) per hectare, our forest conservation and canopy visits generate as much income every year as a local logging company could do only once! Once The Gibbon Experience's infrastructure is fully developed, full ownership of the project will be handed over to the Lao people.
So back to our journey...
Our truck left Hou Xuay packed to the brim with the 12 of us. The road was bumpy and extremely muddy and later that day we got some pretty extreme 4WDing in yet another cramped truck on some more muddy and bumpy 'roads'. This was followed by a beautiful walk in through the jungle up to the kitchen hut (where Kat was jumped, chased and almost kissed by a monkey that took a very very fond liking to her - much to everyone else's amusement). Now comes the fun bit! ... we climbed into these harnesses and then we were given a safety demo (which was literally a demo, as our guide only spoke mong). Next thing we know... we are clipped onto this cable and told to jump of a platform into thin air! Within seconds you zip along this cable (incredible high above the ground!) into the first tree house (a multi-tierd cubby house 40m up from the ground!). This was the shortest cable but scary enough for the first zip!
We spent our two nights in tree house #3 which was a few more zips and a 30 minute walk from the first tree house (the reason why our beautiful guides 'forgot' to bring us more munchies on our second night)... Overall the zipping was absolutely mind-blowing! There was one section of cabling that stretched across two entire valleys! Imagine being 100 meters up on this line, looking down over the top of the rainforest and then looking up along a horizon of rolling mountains and valleys! This cable was just under 1 km and stretched across this valley, basically connecting one mountain with another. Our descriptions don't do it justice, but just imagine those dreams where you fly and you would be pretty close to this incredible experience!
Our tree house was the best of them all, it was 40m up in a 'kissie' tree ...we shared it with Will (the token non-Australian)... p.s. we think he was pretty pleased to be sharing a tree house with 3 aussie girls!... Our tree house was perched on the ridge of this mountain and the way it was placed gave us a 360degree view of this valley. Our bathroom was a place of wonders and was arguably the room of choice in the tree house... just imagine being perched Asian style letting your previous meal be taken by gravity to the forest below all the while watching the sun set behind the mountains! (Sorry if you are a visual person). Our stance in the valley also blessed us with an amazing sunset and during the night we were subsumed by the mist that flooded the valley floors.
Our meals were delivered right to the door step of the tree house. It was good traditional Laos food, which consisted of rice, vegetables and the occasional egg! (but we did have it 3 meals a day). We managed to munch our way through our snack supply on the first night playing cards (which by the way Danielle and Kat are the champions of), leaving us no munchies for the second night : ( . We wrote a note to the provider of popcorn peanuts and fruit requesting such said delights but our guides thought our Aussie humour was a joke so we went to bed without any munchies (sob sob).
So just in case you were wondering we didn't sit on our buts and eat ALL day, on the second day we had a 6 hour mission to this beautiful waterfall (that incidentally we don't have any photos of). This walk gave us the opportunity to become reacquainted with the jungle wildlife (i.e. a s***eload of leeches - of which Freya is still bearing the scars - and a viper snake that dropped in on Kat as she walked up yet another muddy hill). More importantly it gave us the opportunity to become one with our inner mud-wrestler. We basically spent the day tramping through mud and creeks... after all the clay masks our feet are sure looking beautiful! P.S. we all now own the funkiest, yet the most practical pair of mud stomper shoes - fashioned in the rubber soccer boot look. P.P.S. they cost $1.50! Stoked!
Our trip out was as crazy as the way in and that night we were thankful to be sleeping closer to the ground!
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