So we’re back in Luang Prabang, Laos, after a week of travel to and from The Gibbon Experience in the northern Bokeo Province.
Here’s a quick snapshot of what it took to get there:
- 6 hours in a minivan driving on cliffs at 100km per hour (we hit one cow and broke down in the mountains…scary!!)
- 2 days on a slow boat up the Mekong to a Thai border town called Houy Xai (the boat was awesome.. we’d booked ages ago and ended up being the only two people on it with a crew made up of a family and our guide. The food was delicious and we learnt a lot about Laos people along the way)
- 2.5 hours crammed in the back of a large tuk tuk with 7 other people, 3 sacks of food, and a full gas cylinder
- 3.5 hours of trekking/hiking through the jungle, with periods of 40 minutes straight up mountains on rough paths no wider than 30cm.
So what does this get you?
- How about 3 days living in two different multi storey treehouses, built 50 metres above the ground, located in the centre of valleys only accessible via a zip line.
- We had access to over a dozen ziplines ranging in length from 50 metres to 500 metres, and over 150m above the ground.
- Two guides names Lu and Sing Lee, who added immensely to our time – more on this in a sec!
- A huge range of home cooked Laos dishes that kept us going through the 3 hours of trekking we did each day.
- The time to bond with an amazing group of 6 other travellers, sharing stories and fears of dying a grizzly death after falling from the toilet in the treehouse at 2am!
The Gibbon Experience is hard to explain, and to be honest wasn’t what we thought it was going to be. It was actually really hard work and not everyone could do it. It physically pushes your endurance, and tests your mental limits in both the exertion of the trekking and that there was no other option of reaching our destination without facing your fears of jumping off a bamboo platform to zip 500 metres over a valley.
One of our guides Lu has been working with the project for over 4 years. Started as a way to reduce poaching in the Park, the Gibbon Experience funds rangers to protect the flora and fauna, and to take groups like ours on this adventure. Lu was a total charmer! After nearly collapsing after walking up mountains for an hour, he’d cheekily tell us the strange sounds we were hearing in the forest were made by deer…or bears…or whatever…even though they were clearly birds! We started to realise he had mastered a very sarcastic sense of humour.
Did we see a Gibbon? No. We did hear one though. We think. We did see a beetle that looked like a leaf though!!! Ok so as one of our group said, perhaps the Gibbon Experience is less about looking for Gibbons and more about living like a Gibbon by seeing the jungle through their eyes.
Check the video and pics for a better idea of what the best of this experience can offer.
All experiences look easier when montaged with inspiration music playing 
Perfect music.