One exciting event is followed by the next. It feels like my whole life is simply a huge accumulation of great happenings right now! After finishing the Thai cooking class, Suwannee dropped me off at the bus station and I took a 3 hour local bus to the border where I exchanged 30US$ for my Laos visa upon arrival. A couple of bus and Tuk Tuk rides later I arrived in Huayxay which basically consists of one Main Street, a couple of restaurants and guest houses and of course a temple. I checked into a cheap guest house, where I got myself a private room, had a coffee at a home stay place, talked to some really nice people there, met some Israeli guys at the hostel, went back to the home stay with them for dinner, had some fresh grilled chicken and salad and some truly deep discussions about Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and The Hunger Games and ended the night with some guitar playing at the hostel.
The next morning, I checked in at “The Gibbon Experience” and after some coffee, a funny little introduction by one of the Laotian guides and a safety instruction video, the 18 of us hopped onto the backs of two pick up trucks and started the two hour (partly bumpy off road) drive to the village, from which we would hike into the jungle to our tree houses. The one-hour hike was already pretty exhausting since it was all uphill and in the heat and humidity of the jungle. But when we reached the first zip line, everybody forgot about the struggles of the hike and bursted out in pure excitement, like little kids on Christmas Eve, seeing the presents underneath the tree. Well, maybe that was a little exaggerated but we really were excited about zip lining! And the three days and two nights in the jungle were totally worth every cent we paid.

Every morning, we got woken up by the cry of the gibbons at 6:30am and then spent about an hour just enjoying nature in the early morning and watching gibbons swinging from tree to tree in the distance. The rest of our day basically looked like this: omelette, sticky rice and vegetables for breakfast at 8am, putting on our harnesses, zip lining and hiking through the Nam Ha National Park until lunch time, more sticky rice and more vegetables served in the tree house, nap time, tea, coffee and fruits, talks about the gibbon project with our guide (who, by the way, really made an effort to answer all our questions as best as his broken English allowed him to), more zip lining and visiting other tree houses, thinking about how we would survive in the jungle, if all of a sudden our guide disappeared (or: we got lost, the darkness of the night creeped in earlier than expected, wild animals showed up and we couldn’t reach our supplies at the tree house), dinner at 6pm (guess what we had), hot chocolate and sitting together, talking, preparing our beds and falling asleep between 8 and 9pm. It’s crazy that I got 10 hours of sleep two nights in a row! But somehow, the zip lining and hiking must’ve been so exhausting that we really needed that sleep.

Once again, I got really lucky with my group that I stayed in the treehouse with: two colleagues from France, Vienne and Adeline (she suffered from vertigo so we were all really proud of her that she managed to do all the zip lines with us, although, it was pretty hard for her at times), Eva from Germany (she studies nutrition and I had some serious diabetes talks with her), Corinne from France (she’s been traveling for 14 months now – I’m so jealous!), Sam from the UK (he was the goofball of our group and provided us with a couple of good laughs throughout the days) and Bergen (USA) and Robyn (Canada). The two of them met in Australia while doing a semester abroad a couple of years ago and have been traveling together for 3 months now. I hope to meet up again with Sam, Bergen and Robyn in Luang Prabang, since we had a great time and got really close during the gibbon experience. One of our highlights was definitely the nude open shower shooting with jungle-sunset-view on our last night. Guess who, out of us 4, enjoyed that the most.

I’m so glad I did the gibbon experience, since I was really worried about the money (I’m supposed to be on a tight backpacker budget but I guess I’ll just owe mom and dad a whole lot of money when I get back – sponsorship will be accepted!) but it was worth it and I don’t regret making this investment on experiencing nature the way I did and again meeting and hanging out with so many amazing people! I am simply beyond blessed. This is the official recommendation for everyone out there to do the gibbon experience! I promise, you won’t regret it.

Some impressions from before I actually started the Gibbon Experience:

Dan (USA) and Nik (Australia), the honeymoon couple I crossed the border with

Best zip line crew ever: Sam, Robyn, Bergen and me from treehouse no.7:

Our beds for the night

Dinner at the tree house

Ziplining through the forest – something I could really do on a regular basis from now on:

Visiting other tree houses