The Gibbon Experience

After doing some research on things I could do around southeast Asia, I discovered a tour in Laos where you get to zipline through the rainforest and I was immediately sold. It was much better than I expected though. After meeting up with my friend Richard from Norway and heading across the border from Thailand, we made it to the small border town of Huay Xia where the Gibbon Experience starts.

The next morning, we were driven to a village at the edge of the rainforest and then trekked farther in to another village where we were outfitted with harnesses that we could use the rest of the time. After guiding us through a few ziplines, we were allowed to explore the ziplining network to our hearts content with no supervision. It's like being at a theme park with unlimited rides! A few of them were better than others, with better views and a zipline that actually took you all the way across (on some of the ziplines you wouldn't make it all the way  across and would have to pull yourself to the platform at the other side..especially if you didn't make yourself as aerodynamic as possible).

Now the ziplining was one thing, but the other thing that was cool was that we lived in treehouses for 2 nights! Real treehouses outfitted with a sink and a bathroom and everything. The shower was a rainshower were the water would go down through the spaces between the wooden boards and just fall to the forest floor. The toilet actually had a tube that went down so it wasn't just a hole haha. One of the craziest things about living in the rainforest were all the sounds that sprang to life at night. Insects, animals, and everything was out making noise. If you tried to go to sleep, you would be surprised with a new noise every 15 minutes or so! Not to mention the scaryness of all the  bugs, spiders, and rats roaming around the treehouse during the night. We had mosquito nets, but they weren't really nets. They were just cloth, so it was hot and you couldn't see through them. Both 2 nights I was there it rained during the night as well. At about 1am both nights the storm rolled in and just poured over everything. The forest is so dark that you can't see anything unless the lightning strikes. The first night, my friend Richard and I were under the same mosquito net, and at one point Richard heard a rat was roaming about right outside the net. We started freaking out and Richard was convinced that it was "eating it's way through the net." Ahahaha hilarious. Making it through the night was quite an experience.

Now back to the ziplining. It actually involved a fair amount of trekking to get around the forest as well as using the ziplines. Of course if you went around and did the same ziplines over and over again, you had to walk up a hill or stairs sometime to get back all that potential energy. Since we had no supervision, we could also do anything we wanted. We were doing many photos and videos, and at one point we decided to have both of us go on the zipline at the same time so we could film each other. It was a great success, and I'll post vids when the internet is good enough, but definitely not in Laos hah. When we had 2 to a zipline, however, the line sagged a little more and if the trees and branches underneath were close enough we'd be scraping along. We only did it on a few lines where we knew the branches weren't that close. Also, the person behind had to hold the brake most of the time so they didn't run into the guy ahead, since the first person would bring the zipline down and the second person would be speeding up to catch up. My friend Richard also decided to do a tarzan zip where he filmed himself zipping naked...oh the crazy things we do haha.

Anyway, the views from these ziplines were absolutely gorgeous and it's definitely an experience I won't forget.

Getting a bus to Luang Prabang in Laos

After the Gibbon Experience in Laos, my friend Richard and I wanted to get to Vang Vieng for the tubing river as fast as possible. We thought we had it all under control, with an overnight bus booked for us as soon as we got back, and then we'd take a shorter day bus to finish the trip after sight seeing for a few hours in Luang Prabang.

The fun started after we came back to the small border town of Huay Xia to get our actual bus tickets, which we were told were for a 5pm VIP sleeper bus. The lady we bought the tickets from said the 5pm was full now, but the 6pm was available. We were fine with that, so we paid the rest of the money and were told to be back at 5:15pm. We ended up going back a few minutes later to ask her something and suddenly the 6pm bus has broke down she says. She says now we can't go until tomorrow, hmmm. We demand she calls back and gets us the tickets, since we had already booked 3 days in advance and that this was bs, and supposedly she tried but she kept telling us that we must be so tired and we should stay there the night (she also ran a guesthouse). I think what really happened is that someone else paid more money than us to get on the bus and so she (or some other travel agent) took their booking instead of ours. We could see her evil plan, and after getting nowhere we got all our money back and went to the next travel agency literally 30 feet away.

We asked him about a bus to Luang Prabang and he said "No problem 6pm we have!" We negotiated a price (about 180,000 kip each) and then demanded that he call first to make sure it really wasn't full. We told him the other lady said it was broken and he said "Bullshit" with a smile on his face. After the phone call, however, he told us it was full. Now I told him bullshit, I didn't know what was going on but it seemed like everyone was lying to us. After some back and forth he started to say that he could help us. We were confused for a while until he said that if we pay 200,000 kip each he can get us on the bus. Finally we had an understanding! We agreed to pay the extra cash (about $2.50 USD each) and got on the bus no problem. It's full alright, but with us on it too. It seemed there was only 1 guy sitting in the back on the steps without a seat. On the bus now, in seats that are exactly like every other bus (aka not vip sleeper seats or whatever they tell us), but at least the a/c works!

Bag snatching, beware

Most of us have heard of bag snatching, usually in foreign countries...but I'd never heard about it firsthand or seen it myself until today. I'm in Saigon, also known as Ho Chi Minh city, and there are tons and tons of motobikes here. One thing I thought convenient about this is that you can cross the street at any time. The motobikes just weave around you and it's no problem...of course I use my judgement and don't cross the street when there's an entire heard of them, but a few of them don't matter. I didn't even think about the possibility that one of them could steal a bag off someone walking like that, but here's the story.

I left the hostel with 2 girls I met in the evening, Sarah and Maxine. At one point we had to cross the street, and  as usual there are many motobikes going everywhere, but this time there was only 1 or two passing in front of us. There was another motobike that just started moving as we cross the street, and he had his headlight off. It wasn't suspicious, since usually people forget to put it on or maybe don't care. Maxine was in front of me and crossed first, and as the motobike without the headlight came closer and drove between me and Sarah I turned while walking and yelled at him to turn his headlight on. As I turned around I heard Sarah scream behind me and saw the motobike driver grab her strap and take off with it, snapping the strap and driving away with the bag.

Now we're all freaked out, yelling and swearing. Maxine asked if he took it what was in it. Sarah responded that everything was in it. I saw the motobike zoom away and in a last ditch effort I stopped the next motobike I saw and tried to get on the back and tell me him to help catch the guy, but he hesitated since he probably didn't speak much english and people obviously aren't thrilled when random people try to jump on the back of their motobike. He finally got the point and drove off in directions I pointed, but in that 10-15 seconds the theif had made enough turns that I didn't know where he was. We got to a roundabout with 5 or 6 streets stemming off of it and I didn't see anything I recognized among the sea of motobikes...he was gone.

Unfortunately, I came back to the girls empty handed, but now I definitely don't think it's cool to walk across the streets in between the motobikes. One thing that's fortunate about this whole situation is that the purse strap actually snapped. Sarah had the strap around her entire torso, not just on her shoulder, so when he grabbed the strap it would have to snap or she could've been dragged behind the motobike until it did or he let go. Maxine told of a girl she met who had scars from when she got dragged next to a car that stole a purse like that...not cool. It sucks that we're all now suspicious of all the motobikes we see. We can only hope that the thief had some bad karma while fleeing the scene.