Giving my sweat and blood to the jungle..

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat"

- Winston Churchill

   After the boat ride that never ended a huge panic attack over not having any money I set off on what would be the most difficult and most rewarding part of my trip.  There were no tears but there was a little blood, lots of sweat, and a ridiculous amount of toil.  

I signed up for the 3 day two night Gibbon Experience in Nam Kan National Park after my friend Beth said it was the most amazing thing she had ever done.  Halfway through the trip I was ready to hurt her for suggesting I go on this.

The trip begins with an hour drive on a paved road riding in the back of a pick-up truck.  Yes you read that right, the back of a pick-up truck.  About 30 minutes in it began to rain.  After the hour on the unpaved road, you get to experience another hour drive on an unpaved road.  That hour is if the road is completely dry.  Let me tell you that roads made of red clay are super fun when there are rivers running down them.  Thank god the driver was amazing.  He only got stuck once and it only took him 20 minutes to get unstuck and to keep going.  Finally after 3 hours we made it to a tiny little village.  That village was the beginning of our hike.  

The brochure said from the village it was a nice 45 minute hike.  I assumed that 45 minutes was from the village to the tree house, it was not.  That 45 minutes was from the village to a building where we were given our harnesses for zip lining.

 The hike to our tree house ended up being 3 hours straight up a mountain in the pouring rain.  I have terrible balance to begin with, add to that muddy trails, exhaustion, mosquitoes, leeches, and not having super grippy shoes, I was a mess.  I don't know how many times I fell.  I just kept thinking this is where I am going to die.

Then we arrived at the tree house.  Nothing can possibly match the amazing beauty of a forest.

 This was the view from the tree house.  You could see for miles across the tree tops.  All afternoon we just watched the mist roll in and roll out.

The first night we went to bed as soon as it got dark, which was about 7:00.  I had done too much research before the tree house adventure began and was terrified of the things that come out at night in the jungle, did you know there are tree rats?!  Thankfully I did not see any creepy crawly things in the night.

 The second morning dawned bright and the sun came out!  The tree house railing was covered with all of our ponchos, backpacks. gloves, and socks just trying to dry them out from the previous day.

The second day was for a day of hiking and exploring.  We hiked for about 6 hours total in the morning and zip-lined and visited 3 of the other tree houses.  While in one of the tree houses one of the other girls spotted a brown spot moving in the trees.  Thank god I had my nice camera along! I was the only one with good enough zoom to capture this little guy!  

This was not our tree house but one of the ones we visited.  They are exactly as you would imagine a tree house and the only way to get in and out is to zip-line.

Its weird, I think the older I get the braver I become.  Zip-lining is one of my favorite things to do!

This is just one of the views from the zip lines:

Here is where the blood part comes in.  I knew from my research that there were leeches in the jungle, so my plan was that I would wear socks with my sporty sandals.  In my mind these leeches were like the ones we use for fishing in Wisconsin, big oval black things.  Unfortunately that was not the case with jungle leeches.  These leeches were tiny skinny little inch worm looking things and they could go through socks.  I didn't realize I had them on me until I took off my shoes at the end of the hike and found my socks all bloody.  

This was how we slept in the tree house.  There are 7 tree houses in total and in high season all the tree houses will be full but I was part of the second group since they re-opened after the rainy season.  There were only 7 of us and were all in one tree house.  At night we would pull the tent down and tuck it under the mattresses, nothing was going to crawl on me while I was sleeping!

Each tree house is different.  Our tree house was 3 stories!  The first floor was the bathroom and where the zip-line came in.  The picture on the right is showing the main floor and the stairs up to the third floor.    

The main floor had our little kitchen, on the left, and a table and chairs, on the right.  5 of the girls slept on this floor.  Me being stupid called the third floor on the first night and Bente, a Dutch girl stayed up their with me.  I did not think it through, sleeping surrounded by the other girls would have been much better.  Also going down two flights of stairs to the bathroom in the middle of the night trying not to look around so you don't see creepy crawly things is very difficult.  

This was our bathroom! I will never ever have a bathroom with a better view.  The bathroom had a lovely squat toilet, a sink, and a shower!

It was slightly weird showering and being naked with a whole forest in front of you, but then who is going to see you monkeys?

We were very very high above the ground.  

The second night was really nice.  Our two guides, Khami and Wong, stayed to have dinner with us and then we sat around and they told us stories about their lives, Laos, and other groups that had come through.

The food was absolutely amazing.  Three times a day one of the cooks would zip-line into the tree house with what looked like and ice bucket filled with rice, coffee, tea, and this really cool metal contraption that held four different dishes.  We usually had one meat dish and the rest were vegetables.  For dessert they also brought us fruit.  I don't know if it was because the days were so strenuous and we were starving or the food was really that good.  Either way we finished all of it every meal.

The second morning we finally got what we came for! The gibbons!  Gibbons are apes like gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans.  The males are black and the females white.  The gibbon experience was set up to protect the endangered gibbons and their habitat.  Most mornings they "sing" to mark their territory.  The first morning it was raining so they didn't sing.  The best way to describe their sound is to say it sounds like a space ship in a science fiction movie.  You can't see the gibbons in the video they are too far away.   

You see that black big foot looking blob in the middle?  That's a gibbon swinging through the trees! You can sort of see its arms stretched to grab the next branch.  If you watched the video the gibbons were in the highest trees on top of the ridge.

Our walk back down the mountain through the forest was not any less eventful than the walk into the jungle.  It began to poor as soon as we started walking and I again was slipping and sliding all over the place.  The guides were so nice.  They cut me a bamboo stick to use as a walking stick and even held my hand and told me exactly where to place my feet.  The whole time, the guides were wearing flip flops.  For days after the trip I kept finding bruises all over my body and my legs and feet were covered in scratches and bites.  Can someone please explain how I got a bruise in my armpit?  

My mom would have told me to think of the leeches, rain, tree rats, and falling as an adventure and I would have probably punched her while on the trip.  After I had had a shower, clean clothes, and gotten some tiger balm for my bites; I would have to agree.  When will I ever again sleep in a tree house in the middle of Laos? Or wake up at 5:30AM to hear the spaceship sounds of gibbons?  This trip was really about proving to myself that I could do it.  I'm proud of everything I did on this trip but I think my biggest accomplishment was allowing myself to enjoy the gibbon experience even with the blood, sweat, and maybe a few tears.