Flying with Gibbons

Traffic Jam in the Village
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There was certainly one reason only for my stopping off in Huay Xai, to visit the local Gibbon Experience Eco Tourism project. Not one that you ever see advertised, word of mouth gets information on this one around. To combat the threat of loggers in the area and to protect the primary forest in the area, a French guy set up the project so that the locals would actually make more money from it compared than if they let the loggers in. A good incentive for them to make it succeed.

Dotted in the canopy of beautiful primary forest are five tree houses, the highest about 40m from the ground. The only was to get in, harnessed to a zip line. No back door, escape ladder or fancy electricity, this really was paradise. Luckily for me, the day that I was doing it there were only four of us. I shared the tree house with one other English guy. The view over the top of the canopy was breathtaking, and that was just when sitting in the tree house! There are enough ridges in the mountains so that you can zip along from A to B gliding 20m above the canopy, a view that I could only compare with flying out of the rain forest in a light aircraft. You don't smell the trees and feel the wind in your face in an airplane though (not usually though!). One of the lines was almost 400m long.

Flying along 20m above the forest canopy for 400m, now that's fun.

First Tree House
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The first question that I got when I was telling others about going was, what about a toilet? Your going to be 40m up a tree. What about a shower? OK, so it's an eco tourism project and all, but they can't expect respectable foreigners to go for three days without a a bit of a wash! The solution was simple but perfect. They describe the toilet as a 'drop toilet'. Basically a squat toilet in cordoned off area of the tree house, look closely though the hole in the bottom and you can see the ground 40m below. It's difficult to describe this tastefully, but lets say that it was interesting to hear anything that fell though the hole crash onto the ground about 5 seconds later. They siphon water into the tree houses. Taking a shower just before sunset with a spectacular view out onto the canopy was one of the highlights.

Sunrise on the Canopy
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The local guides rambled about in their typical Lao way. At ten in the morning, they would sit in their house playing cards and sleeping. At twelve the same. No change at two either! You had to go and drag them out to take you through the jungle. It's so typical for the country, life is supposed to be relaxed with no shortage of fun and games. Stress is a word that they have never heard of.

Well the gibbons stayed in hiding. The closest I got was a baby gibbon that they are trying to rehabilitate back into the wild after it was abandoned somewhere else in the country. 'Not allowed to nurse it', I was told. We have to get it used to the wild. Every time I went back to the house though the little gibbon was sitting on someone different delighted with the attention.