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.
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