Gibbon Express

If you ever pick up a travel book to Laos, or research cool eco-tourism trips to do in this area, the name "Gibbon Experience" will tend to stand out. The program promises incredible zip-lines, beautiful deep-jungle trekking, nights in tree houses and encounters with gibbon monkeys, depending on the trip you choose. There are two 3-day, 2-night trips, the "Classic" and the "Waterfall", but since Nick and I only had two full days in Houiesay, we chose to do the 2-day, 1-night trip, the "Gibbon Express" (which guarantees great zip-lining, but warns that gibbon encounters are rare).

Most of the other people doing the Gibbon Experience, from what I could gather, were tourists or travelers taking months to travel through SE Asia, so many of them came by bus from Thailand, on the other side of the river. Having more of a time constraint, Nick and I flew to Houiesay from Vientiane on the daily flights Lao Airline operates ($240 R/T) on Thursday, and flew out Sunday. 

We checked in on Thursday, paid our (super expensive) fee of 1.4million kip ($180) per person, and spent the day in Houiesay.

On Friday we met at the Gibbon Experience office at 8:30am to meet the other people on our tour and to watch videos about the Gibbon Experience's history and the "Safety/ Zip-lining How To" instructions. This turned out to be very necessary, as the guide who accompanied us up the mountain spoke practically no English.

Nick and I have both been zip-lining before (Ecuador and Costa Rica, respectively) but it was nothing like this. Laos is a country with few safety standards, so the Gibbon Experience, in a nutshell, is this: you are given a harness (no helmet) and a guide who speaks no English, and you then spend two days flying from jungle-y mountaintop to mountaintop on zip-lines that are upwards of 700m in length and 200m above the ground. At 200m, I suppose, the helmet makes no difference, because if you fall from the zip-line, your chances of survival aren't all that great (especially when the nearest Western hospital is 5 + hrs by car).

To get to the mountains, we were driven an hour outside of Houiesay and then trekked another 2 hours.

Nick on the trekking portion, taking a break

The treks lead to a series of incredible awesome- and long- zip-lines, high above the treetops of the Bokeo Natural Reserve.

Above, Nick comes flying in.

What I look like when I take off ziplining :/ 

Haley and Emma, sisters from England, suffered minor zip-lining injuries. Luckily they were both in the medical field :) (doctor and midwife) (I felt a bit relieved when I heard we had a doctor with us)

Some of the areas we were zip-lining into were enormous bamboo groves.

There was one zip-line which caused particular confusion. Mind you, there are six of us on the trip, and only one guide (who always goes first on the ziplines).
Guide: "This one, all of you."
Me: "All of us?"
Other trekker: "Together?"
Guide: "All of you. Maybe... two."
Trekker 2: "Two at a time? Or all of us at once?"
Guide: "Yes."
Trekker 3: "Wait, yes, as in, two at once? Or all at once?"
Guide laughs a little bit, smiles, and zip-lines away. He's then 400+ m away from us and we have no idea what is going on.
Eventually, we all just went one at a time, trying to figure out how to communicate back if we're supposed to go one at a time, two at a time, or all at once. (It turns out we were SUPPOSED to go two at a time, which would have been cool, but we were trying to figure out the logistics of that and it just sounded so ill-fated.)

As part of the "Gibbon Experience", we spent the night in a treehouse 50m up a tree, surrounded by mountains and trees. 

Nick took this video zip-lining into that treehouse:

There are other places I've heard of (particularly in Washington State and BC, Canada) that have "luxury" treehouse getaways, but this one was simple and great. It had a kitchenette, very (VERY) basic bathroom, and enough room for 12 people, even though we were only 6.

The treehouse's kitchenette. 

Our bathroom had a shower (cold water only) and a squatty potty.

All the food was Lao; it was hot (prepared at the nearby village) and really good. They also served French fries, which Nick liked but I skipped.

They set us up in king sized beds with huge mosquito nets- thank GOD because the bugs were loud and annoying and I'm still terrified of getting dengue.

The rain started late at night and woke up the four girls in the treehouse (the two guys slept through it fine). Since the rooftop was metal, the rain was loud, and we were a bit concerned of lightning, but it let up by the morning. The fog, however, lasted till late morning.

(I didn't mind, because zip-lining through the fog was incredible)

Our treehouse was very close to what the guides claimed was the "biggest tree in Laos". It was covered in these massive pods- we never found out if they were seed pods or hives. (We were crossing our fingers that they were seed pods, but when we went to the bottom of the tree- which was six people around- we found a bunch of rotten honeycomb on the forest floor)

Arriving via zip-line into the bamboo grove

Taking off on ziplines

Even though the Gibbon Experience was expensive, incredibly brazen about safety standards, and a pain in the ass to get to, it was amazing, and I have no regrets about going. I understand why it's so popular in the travel books :) But definitely NOT for the faint of heart

**** UPDATE ****
After talking with a coworker about our respective weekends, he forwarded this list of Lonely Planets "Most Extraordinary Hotels". Check out which one is number 10!!
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/19/travel/lonely-planet-top-hotels/