Laos – Huay Xai

The Gibbon Experience Day 2

The rain that had helped me to fall asleep last night, woke me up this morning. It was pouring down. Great. And we were in a treehouse and had a whole day of trekking and zipling ahead of us.

Our guides had left us the previous night with the information that they would return at 6:30am and we would all go to the biggest tree in Lao, then have breakfast and then continue to zipline.

a bit cold, bit itchy but otherwise ok
a bit cold, bit itchy but otherwise ok

Well my alarm woke me up at 6am, and I and the girls were ready at 6:30am  but our guides were not there. They came around 7:30am and nothing happened. The rain hadn’t stopped and we didn’t leave the treehouse. It was nice and cosy there but we all knew we would get wet that day. Around 9am our breakfast arrived and afterwards we got ready to leave the dry spot. It was actually not that bad. The trees protected us pretty much. But the ground was extremely slippery and I was always worried of falling on my bum.

biggest tree
biggest tree

First we made our way to the biggest tree and then we walked for an hour to our first ziplining.

The ziplining was fun, even in the rain. Our visibility was obviously not as good as the day before. But still pretty amazing.

rain protection
rain protection

One of our guides, he called himself the egg-man, showed Lara and Alina how to make flutes out of bamboo, he made them laugh so they forgot the rain.

Our longest ziplining today was 570m across a river  🙂

Around 12:30pm we made it to our final lunch break stop and had a break. I was really tired. The careful walking on the slippery ground really took it out of me today.  Initially we had been told we would have to walk after lunch another 1 1/2h. The street was so bad that the jeep couldn’t pick us up. We were lucky – it did pick us up. But the trip back was an adventure all by itself. The jeep fought its way back through rivers, mud puddles good 40 cm deep, up steep hills and down slippery ways. I love driving but I wouldn’t have wanted to swoop with our driver who did an amazing job. We drove along banana plantages and made it back into  Huay Xai just before 3pm.

yummi
yummi

So back in the guesthouse we had a hot shower and it was a great feeling. Huay Xai is in itself not very exciting. While I am sitting here on a balcony I am hearing the entertainment from across the river from Thailand. It is a place where people pass through on their way south or into Thailand or to do the GIBBON EXPERIENCE! Not cheap but worth it. But 2 days are enough. 🙂

Tomorrow we are back in a bus to Luang Prabang and a bit further.