Houayxai is a small town just across the border in Laos. It holds little attraction on its own, rather than being a passing through point, or the connection to the National Park and the Gibbon Experience.
We had read lots of reviews online, but still did not know wholely what to expect. We were excited but rather anxious for this experience.
We started our time with a short safety video in the office then loaded into trucks (those with the benches and cover in the back). Driving through valleys, rice fields, up curving mountain roads and onto a dirt road, we made the two hour journey to a small village where we met our guides.
The website had listed the hiking on the Classic tour, the one we had chosen, as difficult. I believe I would have changed that to strenuous. I did not take into account that the tree houses, at such high heights, needed to be reached. Climbing was difficult in large part because it was so much up, and also, due to some rain, the hike was a bit slippery. It was made even more difficult when we added our harness for the zip line around our waist and thighs. The hiking was also beautiful, though, as we hiked through lush greenery, down narrow paths in the forest floor deep below the tall trees above us.
Let me pause and tell you a bit more about the Gibbon Experience. Their motto is "A childhood fantasy with a serious purpose." This organization is not just a tourist destination, but an organization that is trying to make a real difference in the area. It operates in the Nam Kan National Park, a region set aside in the late 20th century to protect land from deforestation and the wildlife that call this place home. Gibbon Experience employs locals, even some former poachers, to act as guides through the forest and teach people about conservation. As one of our guides told us, it is very difficult to get hill tribe people to grasp why not hunting tigers and other endangered animals is so important for the future. They work to educate locals, even school children about the importance of conservation and sustainable agriculture. In many ways, it reminded me of my beloved Heifer International. How do they get money for these important causes and bring awareness to people? That's where the tourists come in. They want visitors at the park to change their perspective, and what better way to do that than to zip line through the jungle and sleep high in the trees in a tree house? Yep, every childhood fantasy come true, and I was one of the lucky ones who got to participate.
With a harness around me, I nervously stepped on to the first wooden platform where the guides helped me attach the two pieces of my harness to the cable. My stomach churning with excitement and nerves, I stepped off and flew into the air. It didn't take long before the butterflies escaped and I was left only with a sense of amazement and wonder as I zipped from peak to peak over a valley that was over 100 meters below. It was breathtaking, incredible, liberating and stunning.
Zip lines felt amazingly safe. They were marked as one way so that we'd never meet in the middle, once we arrived somewhere, there was a clearly marked cable where we could put our safety rope. There were guides stationed periodically, but not at each station, so we mostly loaded ourselves, but it was incredibly easy. The part that I did not take into consideration was that to get from one zip line to another was often a fairly strenuous climb in between.
After monkeying around for a bit, we split our group of 12 into 8 and 4 and headed to our perspective tree houses. And yes, the way to get into our tree house was by zip line. Magical.
Our tree house (number 7), forty meters above the forest floor, was three stories tall. We entered on the bottom floor where we left shoes on all sides of the tree that supported our home and on the opposite side of the zip entrance was the most incredible bathroom one could imagine. To be fair, it may not have been the most luxurious, but I'd dare to say it had one of the best views of any in the world. There was a working sink and toilet (squat toilet, but those are common here) and a rainforest shower head. Showering there, facing the seemingly unendless green before you was an awesome experience. The second night, although there was light in the bathroom, when I showered the world around me was black, but sparks of fireflies and lightening in the distance was equally as majestic.
On the second floor, the main floor, it was one large circular room surrounding the tree. There was a table and stools for all of us to eat and play cards. In the middle, attached to the trunk was a full sink where we could get drinking water and wash dishes. Several lights powered by solar panels allowed our card games to continue into the night. A packet explaining animals we might see, binoculars for exploring the trees and a box to protect our food from small nibbling creatures were all provided. Four pairs of two mattresses were laid around the edge of the room covered in large canvases that provided some privacy as well as protection from mosquitoes.
The third floor was more of a tower room, a fun lookout tower with a trap door floor and one mattress in case a guide needed to stay the night.
Cooked just up the hill a little way, our meals were zipped into us and then made incredibly presentable.
They were all different and all quite tasty. In the evenings and each morning, our guides would come to make us tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Sliced fresh fruit was often served as a snack or dessert.
In our tree house, Jessica and I had nearly ten years on our fellow residents, but we all had a great time getting to know one another. There were two girls from Belgium. Charlotte who had studied to become a physical therapist, worked for a year, then took off and had been traveling through Australia and this part of Asia and the Pacific for nearly two years. She would stop periodically for a month at a time to work at hostels or in cafes, but was savvy with her money and just one week away from returning home. Veelna who had graduated from university recently and was traveling through this part of the world for several months. We had three young Canadians who had just graduated from university and were all in the fencing club together, enjoying a few months worth of travel before they begin their career. Mathias, who was traveling with the two other fencers was our token male in the treehouse and was a great sport. There was also a fellow American from Virginia who was currently taking several months to travel around this part of the world.
Our first evening, Jessica and I stayed up for a while playing cards with our new Belgian friends. We played Uno with some new rules, like when a 0 is played, everyone gives their hand to the player to the left and when someone plays a 7, they trade hands with one player of their choosing. It made the game even more fun and made it last for quite sometime. We also played Hearts, a game my family and I had been bringing out again recently. Veelna and I both knew the game and were able to piece together the rules and explain it to the others. Without knowing really what she was doing, Jessica shot the moon on her very first hand of Hearts.
At 6 the next morning I awoke to strange, unique jungle sounds that almost sounded like a car alarm, the sound of gibbons! The black crested gibbon that lives in this part of the world is endangered and rarely seen, but oh, we heard the song of the gibbons, in fact, it was a sound that woke me up. That's a joy I believe few have experienced. Although they sounded close by, it was very foggy and we could not spot them.
After breakfast, our guides took us on a trek through the jungle to visit the other tree houses and zip along the way. The journey was strenuous, but the views provided and the zip lines along the way were well worth it.
Each treehouse had its own charm and appeal, but after seeing them all, we still agreed we had the best. We first went to treehouse 3, where the other four people from our group were staying. Their house was much smaller than ours, all on one level, but their view was pretty amazing. The house hung out over a valley of sorts, making it feel even higher. They said they had great views of the sunset, but as they were high above some trees, I think we had better chances of seeing creatures.
Next, we took some of the longest and highest zip lines out to treehouse 5, one in a truly stunning setting. If you Google the Gibbon Experience online, this is the treehouse you see. It is on a very tall tree that seems to tower others in the valley so that it stands out apart from the rest of the forest. The zip line into this treehouse was much longer than the ones into others. It, too, had a lookout tower, but much of the main floor was similarly designed to ours, plus a bathroom on the same floor. On our way back to our tree house we were able to go back and forth on some of the longest zip lines, zipping across one, climbing up to the next, back again and repeat. I must admit that due to lack of skills, and the blame I'll give to my small size, there were many times that I did not make it to the end of the zip line. Feet pulled up close and head leaning back, without my backpack seemed to be the best arrangement, but there was not always a rhyme or a reason. Most times, I ended just thirty meters or so from the platform and would monkey climb with my arms to bring myself in. Twice however, I stopped much further than that and the guide kindly met me halfway to pull me in. They were always helpful, grabbing feet to pull us in or giving us a bamboo pole to grab so they could pull us in.
After lunch back at our own treehouse, we ventured onward, across zip lines and up and down mountains to treehouse 1, a huge treehouse with incredibly planned architecture. You zip in on a platform by the bathroom, then step up a few steps to a large living space with the same table, stools and mini-kitchen that ours had. On the same level, there was a double mattress at a great lookout point. Up a floor, another double mattress with its own view and up one more floor two double mattresses. Can you imagine the joy architects have in designing these creations?
It was at this treehouse that our guides, with incredibly keen eyes spotted movement in the trees. We watched for nearly an hour, commonly seeing branches move, and every now and then spotting langur monkeys gliding through the trees or swinging on the branches. Every now and then, one, including the little baby ones, would sit to just hang out on a branch. Almost silent, we allowed them to continue their daily routine and just enjoyed watching them.
We let them be, headed back to our treehouse for showers, dinner, games and some storytelling. Our guides, locals to the area, showed us some "stick" games similar to toothpick challenges I do with my students involving moving sticks around with specific rules to recreate a new design. Mor, our young, free-spirited, recently married guide typically just laughed and smiled through our time together, probably laughing at how difficult we found climbing the mountain, or how uncoordinated we looked on the zip line compared to him. In large part though, I also think that is a great way to communicate when language is not easy. Thongchanh, our older and wiser guide typically took the lead, and although he was always sure to keep us safe, he also was able to have fun with us. He told us more about the National Park, its founding and the purpose for it. He told us about his growing up near these woods and the one and only time he saw a tiger. He told us about the wide variety of jobs he's had from being a primary school teacher, to working in a hotel in the city we now head to, being a trekking guide for another nearby national park and the difficult task of creating the zip lines. We asked about how the country was affected by wars in the area, the government and his religion. The country is a democratic communist country where people vote for local officials and then those officials vote for a president. The people in the hill tribes and rural areas of Laos are not Buddhist as 65% of the country is, but rather he is Animism. As best I can understand, they believe in spirits and the worship of different spirits such as the sky and the mountains. I loved listening to his life story and appreciated his openness.
After he left, a game of spoons amongst the eight of us sparked. I have such great memories of this high-speed, chaotic game. My friends and I frequently played in high school with whatever items we could find such as pens or chapsticks. On a mission trip to Panama, we taught our bus driver to play and he soon beat us, repeating for the rest of the trip in his beautiful accent, "Who iz ze champion?" The game went on for several hours in our treehouse, no doubts our screams and squeals scared some of the animals. The meek and kind new comers to the game soon learned that one had to be assertive, sneaky and sometimes downright vicious to ensure one got a spoon at the end of each round. There were lots of laughs and only a few scratches before we finished up our game.
It was then that we looked at the night sky. It had been cloudy the night before, but our second night, between the tops of the distant trees and the overhang of our treehouse, we could see the stars. We turned off all the lights in our house, each sat with our legs dangling through the railing, over the side of the treehouse watching fireflies flicker and watching for shooting stars. Mumford and Sons played in the background, and in the quiet, calm of it all, many voices joined in. I thought of another time I had listened to this band, a time that I set out on a day's journey on my own in England to see the White Cliffs of Dover. It was a time I felt supremely independent, and I loved sharing the songs, this band with another group of travelers, younger, in a different stage of their lives, but never the less, also seeking and feeling that independence. I should also mention that there were also several Moana sing-a-longs in our tree house.
Clouds snuck in and covered the stars and we took that as a sign to go to bed. We had heard reports of how loud the jungle was at night, and yes, there were noises, but nothing all too surprising for this Alabama girl. Frogs, cicadas, and the fluttering of bat wings were really the only sounds I heard. None of them woke me nor kept me up, but if I awoke, the sounds always made me smile.
As for weather, we were incredibly lucky. It is the rainy season here, that's why it is the tourist low season. That doesn't mean it rains all the time, but more like our Alabama summers with frequent pop up storms. The first evening, it rained just a bit after we had settled into our treehouse. On our walkabout the next day, it rained just a bit, but that seemed to blend in with the sweat dripping down my chin, but was even cooler, so it was simply a welcome relief. When we left treehouse 1 after watching the langurs, it had become dark and we heard thunder rumbling, but the skies managed to hold back until we reached our own home away from home a good forty five minutes later. We saw more rain from the safety of our vehicle on the way back to town.
The bugs were annoying, relentless and incredible. Mosquitos were present, but truly only relentless at dusk and dawn, but burning mosquito coils (similar to a citronella candle) helped tremendously. Leeches were the most unpleasant. When I think of a leech, I think of a large slug-like creature. Not the ones here. In fact, I'm glad I was shown one as I may have picked it up thinking it was a large inch worm. They were frequently on our shoes, and largely due to the ickiness of them, we had big reactions to finding them. A couple people in the group, Jessica included, had leeches sneak in through their shoes and socks and attach themselves. They didn't leave large marks, nor could they even really be felt, but rather they just sucked off a layer of skin and made blood flow. Icky, yes, but nothing that should deter one from the jungle. We also saw some incredible bugs. At night, especially as it was dark and our lights were on, the jungle bugs flocked to us. There were bright green grasshoppers the size of a mouse and a rainbow of colored moths, many even with shining golden eyes. Thankfully, the largest spider over ever seen was spotted out in the jungle at a safe distance.
That brings me though to the lack of wildlife that we did see. This national park is close to where the Jungle Book took place. There are tigers, panthers, bears, leopards, wolves, deer and so much more. I didn't see a single reptile of any kind. I saw a handful of small, bright green birds, but not many, and not ones that I'd consider greatly tropical. I saw a squirrel, but he didn't look all that different from my brown ones back home. We did see a small rat the first night, but he quickly scampered away. But I did, for an incredibly brief moment spot a gibbon. As we were completing our zip lines, we began to once again hear the sounds of the gibbon songs, coming from nearby. Just minutes away from the small huts where we'd leave our harnesses behind, the guides spotted a few in some nearby trees. Most of what I saw was movement, but I did see those long arms on a dark body as he moved from one high branch to another.
One would think that going into the jungle, zip lining over high heights and sometimes being left on our own, I'd feel unsafe. I never once felt unsafe. Our guides, like geese parenting their goslings, protected us in a line, one in the front to guide us and one in the back to protect us. Our treehouse was close to the kitchens where they slept, not close enough that we could hear one another talk, but close enough that they could certainly hear our screams if something went terribly wrong.
I cannot recommend this experience enough. Yes, it was a bit expensive, but I believe that the money we spent goes to a good cause. I lived a childhood fantasy for the past three days, and I have no doubt the Gibbon Experience will be a highlight in my life for a very long time.
Apparently, three days in the jungle wasn't enough time with these incredible people, so after we showered, we met back at BarHow and enjoyed six hours together, drinking, eating and conversing with our new friends. Two Americans, two Belgians, a Slovakian, a Northern Irish man, two from Guernsey and a German who joined in sat around discussing a wide variety of topics from politics to music to Disney movies to healthcare to how to give all people equal opportunities, but mostly sharing a whole lot of laughs.
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