Yesterday I was back in Bangkok again. It was a seriously long day. That morning I was in northern Laos, took a boat across the Mekong to Chiang Khong in Thailand, a local bus to Chiang Rai, and then a mad rush in a taxi to just make my flight to Bangkok. En route I was trying to backup my Laos photos to my ipod and it crashed. I couldn't resuscitate it so took it to an Apple store in the city last night and they pronounced it dead. All my music, photos, movies... gone. But I did make backups of my photos to DVD when I was in China and then Meegs has copies of my Thailand photos. And in another stroke of luck, I bumped into Larisa outside MBK in Siam Square and I gave her copies of my Cambodia photos when we were there so I copied those back. So, in the end it looks like only Vietnam is lost. I can get over that. But my music collection was really starting to take shape. Oh well... shit happens.
But, back to the business of explaining where the hell Timmy has been since my last post. I left Luang Namtha for Huoay Xai on Saturday and joined my Gibbon Experience group there on Sunday morning. Paul and Yvonne even managed to join us through a late cancellation. The Gibbon Experience is part of a project aimed at protecting the environment of the rare species of Gibbon (monkey like animal) that only lives in that particular part of Laos and was until recently thought to be extinct. Whilst the project does all sorts of work in the area, the Gibbon Experience is more a means to raise awareness and funds. They have built a series of Treehouses throughout a portion of the Bokeo National Park and these are linked by an amazing arrangement of zip lines strung high above the canopy. If you're scared of heights this wouldn't be your cup of tea. I've done some zip lines back home but those were a kids jungle gym in comparison. This is the adult version. I still have a grin on my face!
Yet, before you even begin to think that I've spent the last few days swinging around in trees in the sunshine, let me elaborate. It stopped raining for about 4 hours the entire time we were out there. That meant the drive out to the nearest village on Sunday involved more pushing of than actual sitting in the car. The hike up to our treehouse was a massive ordeal too, through thick mud up steep slopes. In the end we arrived at our treehouse at 6pm having started out at 7.30am! But the zip lines we did get to ride on the way out were incredible, and to stay in a treehouse 50m above the jungle floor is an experience I'll never forget.
The team: Nicola, Jenny, Me, Paul, Fritte, Yvonne, Max, Lisa and Mike.
Not exactly an easy ride out on day one. That's my ass on the far left (but of course all my young female readers would have spotted that already....)
Our treehouse 50m above the jungle.
It may be a squatter but that's still a loo with a view!
The treehouses are used on a rotational basis and luck would have it ours was the furthest into the jungle. That mean we weren't able to play around on much of the zip line network on our second day, but we did get to experience more of the jungle than others would have. And experience it we did. On our morning hike through the jungle we were introduced to the lovable local leeches for the first time. There were thousands of them. They lie in wait on the paths and from the surrounding foliage waiting for something warm-blooded to pass by. They get everywhere and are nigh impossible to get rid of. It seems only burning them with a cigarette seems to work, or scraping them off with a sharp knife. Or you simply wait till they've gorged enough so they fall off bloated on your blood. Avoiding them was impossible. They latch on as you pass often enough, but if you stop for a second you can see hundreds of them crawling straight for you. And they move surprisingly quickly. Youch! But again, that was an experience, and that's what this year is all about.
Just after removing one of my first leeches. For some reason the anticoagulant in their saliva affected me more than others. Each bite would bleed for hours.
Fritte had some serious trouble with the leeches. His long pants meant they got everywhere... and I mean everywhere!After a mad morning of playing with the local wildlife we mostly just spent the afternoon chilling in the treehouse and playing around on the zip lines that ran in and out of it. On that note I must mention that the guides and other staff stay in a small camp on the hill nearby, food is delivered by a grinning local zipping through the canopy. Very cool.
Fritte on one of the lines into our treehouse. The photos just don't seem to do it all justice, but I did take lots of videos too and those do show the speeds and heights we reached. Amazing.
Nicola comes in to land on one of the longer lines on the last day.
Max sets out from the treehouse in search of some hot coffee...On our final evening the heavens really opened up. The massive downpour continued into the next day so our hike out to the village was made even more exhausting as we had to trudge through very deep and slippery mud. We did get to do some more of the longer zip lines though, and no amount of rain could dampen that fun. After a heavy 5 hour slog to the village it was confirmed that the vehicle that had dropped us there on the way in couldn't make it due to flooding so we had to hike all the way out to the main road. That was another exhausting 5 hours over very steep terrain. In all that meant 10 hours of some of the most tiring hiking I've done, in mostly pouring rain. I slept well that night.
An example of the "paths" we had to hike on. And that's only on the second day before the downpour!And now I have a days rest in Borneo before starting the possibly even more arduous climb of Mt Kinabalu. I might even start getting a little fit by the end of my trip.
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