On Top of the World and Away From It All

So I've finally found the one place in Southeast Asia that has no 7-11s, travel agencies, internet cafes, or tuk tuk drivers. All you have to do is get yourself to Huey Xai, Laos, take a very bumpy 2.5-hour off-road ride into Bokeo Nature Reserve, hike for ~1-2 hours, and zipline into peace and solitude. Honestly, our treehouse (Treehouse #1) was exactly what I had hoped my treehouse in Turkey was going to look like, only better. It was three split levels (a girl from Tahoe, Sarah, and I got the "penthouse") built around a many-pronged big old tree. I can't say how high we were, but I believe our guide something like 80 metres? We weren't in the highest one, but the views were unreal (wait for the pictures...they're coming shortly), particularly in the morning, when mist filled the dips and valleys and a guide would zipline in with our hot breakfast. You showered in one corner with a full view out two sides of it all (and, I guess, a full view in for anyone happening to be zipping by...not likely, since there are only 12 people and a few guides out there and any one time). My powers of description are failing me here, and I'm going to have to let the pictures and video tell the story.

The ziplining was incredibly scary at first--some of the cables were as high as 150 metres and as long as 380 metres--but it didn't take long to put our faith in our equipment and just go for it. By the third day, we were zipping around without guides and without fear (well, with some fear. I still checked my equipment about four times before I let go each time). Our guides were awesome, but a little lax and a little lazy. You'd ask them to check if something was okay, and they would say without looking, "Yeah, is okay, is okay." The Gibbon Experience founder, who's French, apparently started to project (the only one of its kind in Laos, it saves the land on which it is built from being cleared and/or developed) with the intention of turning it over to the Lao people. It's been 14 years and he hasn't done so yet, and it's not difficult to see why. Still, our guides were a lot of fun, and our equipment never did let us down.

I'll admit that I wasn't completely recovered from my illness while I was up there. I threw up the morning we left and the hiking did not help. I was gasping for air at times, dizzy pretty much constantly (I imagine the elevation didn't help), and nauseous for much of the three days. Let's just say that if survival of the fittest were at play and someone were going to get attacked and dragged off by tigers, bears or cannibalistic hilltribes, it would have most definitely have been me. But honestly, I don't think I could have enjoyed it more if I had been well. Adrenaline is a powerful, powerful drug, and as sick as I felt on certain of the big climbs, the minute my caribiner and safety cord were attached and I was flying high above the trees, I felt like a million bucks.

Unfortunately, the adrenaline couldn't help with the one small issue that was the rat infestation in our treehouse. At night, we were in beds under canvas tent-like structures hangnig suspended above our beds, but the tent was chewed through in places and we had all heard stories of rats chewing their way into beds and bags (it happened to the people in one of the other treehouses in our group). It was full-on creepy at night because you could hear them all around your bed, and I was full-on paranoid by the second night. I listened to my iPod so I didn't have to hear them, but then I got paranoid about what I wasn't hearing. In the end, as far as I know no rats so far as attempted to get in my tent, and Kristin, your bag is intact.

So sadly I'm back on solid ground now. We didn't end up seeing any gibbons, but we heard them "singing" in the morning. I kind of respect how shy the gibbons are, compared to the attention-whore monkeys of Thailand. They're not there to perform for us and we're not there to feed them or tease them. It felt like the most natural animal-related experience that I've had in Asia. All in all, the whole thing was magic. I burnt my right cheekbone and left ear (two separate, somewhat foolish incidents) on the cable when I was attempting to zip and take pictures at the same time. I think the cheek burn looks kind of badass (and you know how hard I strive to look badass). There was some suggestion among the girls in my treehouse that it might scar, but so what if it does? I'll have a permanent souvenir of one of the coolest three days of my life...