Gibbon Experience - Here we come!

Jean-Luis, Samsi and Angela
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We left Huay Xai at 7:30 for the three and a half hour journey to the Bokeo Reserve. We were in the back of one of two trucks along with two English girls and a Canadian girl, looking forward to the journey ahead. Little did we realise the havoc the previous nights storm played with the Laos roads – they are bad enough anyway but after the downpour the road was literally a mud pit. We left half an hour behind the first truck but soon caught them up as they got stuck in the mud and had to be pushed out by a digger. We were lucky as our pick-up was sturdier than theirs and made it through the mud without too much difficulty – although there were a few hairy moments when we were sliding from one side of the road to the other with sheer drops either side of us!

Night one of the experience
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But we arrived safe and sound (with only bruised arses) in the small town of Ban Donchai just beside the reserve about 4 hours after setting off. Here we picked up a couple of the reserves guards who jumped in the back of our truck and threw their rifles on top of us. We drove for another half hour across a river and into the reserve where we then set off on the one hour trek into the thick jungle. It was a tough enough trek and we were happy to get to the area called ‘The Kitchen’ after an hour or so. All of our Laos guides, cooks and other volunteers live here and not surprisingly it’s where all of the cooking is done. A harness was given to each of us which we’d be using to zip around the place for the next few days.

Sunset
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The first of the zip lines brought us into Treehouse 1. Now it looks like great fun but it is definitely more nerve wracking than it looks and particularly for Lou who has had a fear of them since childhood. But once the first one was over us it became slightly less scary. In Treehouse 1 everybody in the group introduced themselves – there was a really good mix of people from England, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden and Denmark – 14 of us in total. The way it works is there are 3 treehouses which people stay in – No 1 which sleeps the most people and is like the social hub, No 2 which sleeps 2 people and is slightly more secluded than then first and is considered the romantic treehouse and No 3 which is a good trek away from the other 2, sleeps 4 people and has the best wildlife surrounding it. We decided to sleep in No 1 on the first night and No 3 on the second night. After Michael, a Belgian volunteer explained all about the project to us and what we should and shouldn’t expect over the next few days we headed out with our Lao guides to explore the zip line network. Michael, Eve and Liz are 3 European volunteers working on the project but are mainly there for teaching English to the guides and any questions we had were to be directed to our Lao guides as eventually all responsibility will be handed over to the Lao people.

Morning mist
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We had another storm on the first night there – pretty cool to watch from the treehouse but it meant, much to Lou’s horror, that all of the spiders sat inside under the roof for shelter – the biggest spiders you have ever seen!

Next day, the majority of the group went on a full day trek to a small waterfall. We spent the second night in treehouse 3 with two others – Jean-Luis a French guy and Cecilia a Swedish girl. It was much much nicer than the previous night as it’s more secluded and we got to hear and see a lot more wildlife and an amazing sunset. A green viper snake lives in a tree just beside treehouse 3 and lots of families of gibbons live on the area too. A civet came to visit us in the middle of the night - he didn’t seem the least bit bothered by us all staring at him. We were also woken by the sounds of an owl flapping about inside the treehouse – luckily we had our mozzie nets to keep us hidden.

Lou taking off on one of the zip lines
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Day 3 started with breakfast 1 (fresh fruit, nuts & coffee) of the day in our own treehouse before trekking off back to treehouse 1 for our second breakfast (yes, they give you 2 breakfasts a day – the second one is all sticky rice and veggies – quite bizarre!). On the way back we bumped into 2 guides who pointed out the sounds of a family of black gibbons singing in some trees nearby. Niamh managed to spot 2 gibbons after following the guides through some thick trees and bushes – just a quick 15 second glance. We were sad to say goodbye to the Gibbon experience, 3 days just wasn’t enough but we made our way back to the truck and were dropped off in Bon Donchai to get the local bus to Luang Nam Tha 6 hours north with 4 other people from the experience – Jean-Luis, Cecilia and 2 English girls Bec and Angela.