I've made it back from the jungle alive!

After travelling North through to Laos to the border town of Huayxai, which is just across the Mekong River from Thailand, we signed up for The Gibbon Experience. And what an experience it was...

The Gibbon Experience is a conservation project in the Bokeo nature reserve, which was under threat from poachers and logging. The idea is that the people who were poachrs, and who know the rainforest area so well, become guides, showing tourists around on a 3 day trek. They live on the reserve, split into guides, trekking assistants and cooks to prepare all the meals (you can't cook in a wooden treehouse for obvious reasons; treehouse number 1 isn't there anymore after someone left a candle on at night).

We were in a group of about 18, and the experience began with a high-adventure off road ride to Bokeo national park. First bruises well underway, we set off on a trek up into the thick of the jungle, stopping to pick up our harnesses from a wicker shack on the way (more on the harnesses later..). Then we were assigned treehouses; perched about 100metres up above the jungle, these wooden structures were open-air, quit basic but really charming - I felt like I was in the Swiss Family Robinson! Cords & I were sharing with Ying and Micheal, a lovely Australian couple. To get into the treehouses, you use a zip-wire and swing way above the forest through the trees - just like a monkey :)

Within an hour of getting to the jungle, it started raining - and I mean literally torrential, straight-down, bucketing down rain, so heavy I couldn't open my eyes on the zipwire. Soaked through, we had a restorative Ovaltine and were promptly abandoned by the guides, to face a night in the jungle by ourselves.

Lots of things go bump in the night in the jungle! HUGE hornets, massive green spides, a posionous tree snake nestled dangerously close to our treehouse.. it was so noisy! After sunset it gets very very dark and the mist rolls in, so we huddled around the mosquito coil trying to will away thoughts to creepy-crawlies (and not drink too much, as we didn't want to use the toilet in the dark!).

Having an open-air shower in a treehouse with no walls, suspended about the jungle is quite an experience! I love the treehouse, and zipping between the trees in the jungle was amazing. The trekking was hard, dirty work - in damp clothes- but we saw beautiful butterflies, enormous palms and ferns, lots of moths (but not a gibbon in sight!). Our guide, Nushan, was great - telling us about the land, what noises belong to each animal, when to brake on the zips and when to run like hell to build up some speed!

Last night the sky was really clear, so we watched a beautiful sunset then looked up at the stars to see the milkyway... and a shooting star! Glow-worms and fireflies were all around us too, it was magical.

Woke up early for a trek this morning over to another treehouse, then had another long trek through the jungle back to the little nearby village. When 3 wicker shacks look like civilisation you know times are bad! Filthy dirty, caked in mud, hot and sweaty, our little band of happy campers have never been so pleased to see a cold drink...

I knew the experience would be hard work... but hadn't realise it would be anywhere near as hard as it was! I'm sporting a nice bruise on the forehead from a little zipping crash, and I don't think I can face eating rice again for a good while, but I did manage to escape with just one mozzie bite and no leeches - no mean feat given the 1,000s of the slippery things which feasted on our trek-mates over the 3 days!

Headed back to Luang Prabang tomorrow and there'll be wifi there so I'll post some photos soon. Off for a well-deserved cocktail now!

xx