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A bit of a change of plans as an early opening in The Gibbon Experience allowed us to do it way before we had scheduled to on March 2nd.  We finished it today and took a bus up to Luang Namtha where we are taking actual showers again until we head to Luang Prabang tomorrow morning by bus.

Although I didn’t actually see any gibbons, The Gibbon Experience was incredibleeee

It started in the morning 3 days ago when they piled 11 of us into the back of a covered truck-turned-into-truck-taxi and drove us 3 hours into the wilderness.  We drove past so many incredibly poor Laos villages where every single person in them would turn to stare at the truck full of white people.  The villages are all dry, dirty, extremely basic, and similar: raised wooden huts, chickens and other livestock running free, kids running around without pants, and adults doing pretty stereotypical farming things.  They all look straight out of national geographic.

We bounced up and down in the truck for an hour on an unpaved, dirt road into the jungle (I’m not sure exactly when a “forest” becomes a “jungle” but I’m pretty sure this qualifies) where they dropped us off at another of the typical villages.  This village sees white people every day so it wasn’t that atypical for them to see us, or that strange for me to play a type of volleyball game with them where you have to kick (think hackey sack) this wooden ball over the net. 

After waiting around a while we were guided into the jungle for a brutal couple hour uphill hike.  The forest here is really dense with tons and tons of thick bamboo shooting up on both sides of the trail constantly.  The sounds are really the crazy part, though.  I can’t even begin to describe the various bird and monkey sounds you can hear.  We heard deer at one point as well and the guide said he’s also seen bears and tigers (!?). 

After a bit we came to the the first Gibbon Experience hut where the first thing you could see was 2 monkeys tickling… is that a dog?  No, it’s a tiny little foot long baby bear.  2 monkeys tickling a tiny little foot long baby bear!  Turns out all 3 of the animals had been rescued from poachers and were being taken care of there.  The monkeys were crazy and would jump all over everybody and try to take hats and sunglasses or anything else they could manage.  Allan and I had fun playing with the insanely cute bear on the last day.

After a short safety talk at the bear/monkey hut they gave us our harnesses for the zip lines and we went hiking some more.  This time, though, we would hike for 15 minutes and then zippppppp across a mountain valley to the other side.  I knew the zip lines would be fun, but they were way longer and higher than I actually expected.  I don’t think I can really describe them, so I’ll try to let my pictures and Allan and Nick’s videos help whenever I can get them on the internet.

We slept both nights in a, for lack of a better word, tree house.  The only way into it was zipline: 2 lines in, 1 line out.  Again, pictures are pretty necessary to describe the height and awesomeness of the tree houses so I’m not even going to try.

The second and third day were spent hiking and ziplining and were equally as awesome as the first.  I was dead tired after everyday and we all went to bed around 8 pm last night. 

We had a 4 hour bus ride today from where they dropped us off up here to Luang Namtha that was… unpleasant.  So far all the roads I’ve seen in Laos have basically been one huge, ginormous, slow moving, they-will-never-finish-this-good-lord-how-long-ago-did-they-start, construction site.  Sleeping is impossible as you’re constantly being shaken around and taking a beating from the terrible road conditions.  It was really hot also, but you can’t open the windows very long before dust and dirt flies into the window.  You don’t have any room for your legs, and the bus was so crowded people had to sit in the aisles.  Today was 4 hours and I think tomorrow might be closer to 16.  I’m hoping it’s shorter but happy with the fact that it’s the last long bus ride I’ll have to do before I reach bangkok at least.

Anyways, spirits are high and I’m looking forward to doing more outdoorsy things in Luang Prabang and around.  I’ve read that you can do any sort of combination of white water rafting, mountain biking, kayaking, rock climbing, caving (I refuse to call it spelunking), tubing, and hiking for pretty cheap so I’ll probably spend most of my time doing that until I head down to Vientiene and then back to Bangkok to meet Moe.