Part two of the Gibbon Experience  Zip-lining Tree House Adventure in Laos

Part one: Getting to the Gibbon Experience, Hiking in, & Learning to Zip-Line!

We had three days and two nights total in our tree house and the six of us really didn’t want to waste any of our time on the first day.  Once the guide dropped us back off he told us we were free to zip around to our hearts desire…and when we got hungry, the guides would zip some food right into our tree house.  The only warning we were given was to not use the zip-lines at night…oh please!  They leave a group of foreigners alone in the forest…you better believe that we went zipping that first night; we even nicknamed ourselves the night-gliders!

Once it was totally pitch black in the forest we all went for a 30 minute loop around the jungle – we each took turns stopping in the middle of the line for a few minutes so that we could stare up at the inky black sky dense with twinkling stars.  The sky was so clear that I saw at least a dozen shooting as I was dangling there on the top of the forest canopy.

Our second day involved a hike to some of the farther zip-lines.  The zip-lines are built in circular patterns so that you can easily make your way around the jungle, and the further zip-lines are longer (180 meters was the longest one) and that’s good – the longer they are, the more time we have soaring through the trees.  We made it back to our tree house by lunch time, fortified ourselves with rice and veggies (rice is a three times a day staple in these parts and a little hard to handle) and then everyone geared up into our harnesses and gloves geared for the Golden Triangle Olympics.  Tree house 1 has a book in it with tips and comments from all of the others that have come to Gibbon before us – one of the ongoing games is the GTO – each group staying in the tree house competes in the Olympics and records their score.

Basically, the GTO is a triangle of three zip-lines that surround our tree house and take under four minute to complete at a walking pace – but for the Olympics you have to go at a dead run (uphill mind you) and compete for the best time.  Someone in the book recorded a time of 1:56 – we all think he was a liar though.  Our best time was 2:13 and that was by one of the Swiss guys.  Laura clocked in at roughly three minutes and my time was so pathetic I can’t even write it (I was sick okay, give me a break!).

Besides zipping at night we passed the hours after sunset with  hot Ovaltine and a deck of cards by candle light.  I have to say, I’m so lucky that we had a great group staying in the tree house.  Two girls from Canada, Maya and Shelby, were just so fantastic and fun and the Swiss guys were our heroes and saved us from  the rats – yes, I wrote rats.  With all of this fantastic fun it’s only fitting that I note that yes, the tree houses have rats and there is really nothing that can be done about it…you’re living in the forest after all.  Shelby got her bag chewed the first night and one of the guys in tree house 3 actually woke up with one of those huge suckers on  his face – disgusting!  The Swiss boys armed their sling shot with tamarind seeds at night because there were so many rats crawling on their nets. As for Laura and I, we were hugely fortunate to not have in problems with the rats – I will say, though, as disgusting as it is, they gave us a way to pass the time.

We all vogued for a rat-themed photo-shoot (it’s becoming a habit, I know) right before Laura accidentally dropped her camera out of the tree house – a few seconds later we heard its clunk onto the forest floor and the mood in the treehouse dropped quite a few notches.  Luckily one of the guides hiked to the base of the tree to recover the camera and we were able to salvage the pictures.

Throughout all of this zip-lining fun one of the points of the whole trip was to spot the endangered  Gibbon monkeys.  Well, they can’t guarantee anything and our tree house was not fortunate enough to actually see the monkeys in the forest – we did though wake up to the beautiful sound of their singing and that was magical enough for me :)

We left right after breakfast on the third day and there wasn’t a person in the group who hadn’t had an amazing experience.  As I reflect on it now that a couple of weeks have passed I really can’t even believe that I was able to have that amazing chance – definitely one of the highlights of the trip!

Our Tree House Rat Inspired Photoshoot: