The Gibbon Experience

Find the Gibbon experience in Laos; it's full, I'm on the waiting list, two people cancel few hours later; I'm on it. Next morning 8 o'clock; get picked up by pick truck, drive 3 hours to jungle, trek into the jungle with our group; this is where the fun starts. We take out first 'zip-line' and soar over the forest! This is amazing. No, really, it is. Okay, perhaps a little scary at first. Instead of attempting to describe, you MUST check out the videos this time (there's another reason coming up). We hike and zip to the TREE HOUSE we're staying in. It is amazing, I've seen all the other ones and our was the best (check the pictures!). There's six of us: a couple (South Africa and UK) a Dutch girl and two girls from Weert :P. Our group is amazing. We have tons of fun, making jokes, playing shithead (card game) and just generally sharing the experience.  

After the second tiring day we safely arrive at our tree house and decide to chill out. Then we get hit by a thunderstorm and almost die. Then we go to sleep and wake up the next morning and head home. Okay wait what? A thunderstorm??!!! Yeah, in the distance right, we hear a little bit of bad weather coming up. Now since it's Laos, we have no idea what to do in the event that we would find ourselves in actual bad weather. Except for the fact that me and Simon (the other man) read the safety instructions that WERE present in one of the OTHER houses. It said something about evacuating if there was 7 seconds between the flashes and the thunder, but in our case there were no flashes till it was too late. I remember lying in my sleeping tent and thinking "wow, if it hits, I might get wet if I stay here" (like that was the worst thing that could happen!). It starts raining and then we're just hit by a Tsunami of the MOST SHIT WEATHER EVER! (see the video!) Our whole tree dangerously bends over backwards (like it's gonna catapult us across the forrest), but kinda stays there due to the force of the wind. Commence epic death situation + all hell breaking lose! Our guides appear and are freaking the frick out! "get out, get out!!!". Now to get out of our house, we have to use one of the zip wires. I have my harnass and backpack on in seconds and am the first one ready to zip on out, when I realize that is not very selfless of me. I wait till the others start arriving downstairs and then zip out of there. 2 seconds of zipping and I'm completely soaked. When I'm on the other side I realize it's not just rain, but also marble sized hail, by which I get continuously hit in the head. I wait till everyone is out and we then proceed to the kitchen building. One of our guides is still freakin out. Everyone in fact is highly emotional, with emotions ranging from, terror, to shock, to sandness, to excitement. There we take about half an our to take in what just happened. Then the storm is gone as quickly as it came and leaves us in sunny weather. We return to the house and find EVERYTHING wet and there's leafs and 'jungle shrapnel' everwhere. We tidy everything up and receive some dry bedding from the guides. Then!!! however, the thunder decides to come back! This time.. while it's getting dark. Rest of the night we sit and wait with our harnesses on while listening to the rain and thunder in the distance. At some point it becomes clear that we won't be hit by anymore freak sudden tsunami killer storms and we end up going to bed (some still wearing their haranasses) :P And the best part about all of this: I caught it on video (I was the only one stupid enough out of all the groups to take out the time for this).

Next morning we have breakfast and zip / trek back to base camp and finally are driven back to Hua Xai (the town we were all staying).

I must say that this has been an absolutely amazing experience. The zip wires are breathtaking. The excitement, the speed, the view, the height are all equally impressive. Then also it was really great to have such a cool group of people to share the experience with (you becoms friends really quick while going through all this stuff). In general it was good to be social again after all the monastry visits actually. And finally, the storm (in hind sight) made the experience something to never forget.

Oh, I also invented a new (horizontal) technique for zipping that made you go faster and this somehow evolved into our groups cult story of me creating a porn website called 'Horizontal with Roger!'.

PS: Graham: thanx for the reference.

PS2: The videos and more pictures are UP!!! Also added commentws to the pictures. Upload speed in Huay Xai was so slow I couldn't even upload pictures. I'm in Luang Prabang right, which took a two day boat trip to get to. It' a really pretty city. Went out last night, had a lot of fun! I know quite a few people here now. So I'm definitely back in normal life, yet the mindfulness and relative importance of things, puts a whole new perspective on things. I also added some picture back from in Fang that I forgot to ad before.