Gibbons!

We spent our last morning in Thailand looking for a decent Lao road map, which proved to be as elusive as the giant catfish museum that had sprouted up on our Thai map. Fortunately we found a nice restaurant with inexplicably good scones and banana smoothies, as well as a great view across the Mekong to the Lao city of Huay Xai. The crossing itself passed uneventfully, although it did have it's share of oddities. The Thai Lao friendship bridge has a large greeting structure, but traffic was minimal at noon when we arrived. The switch from the left side of the road (Thailand) to the right (Laos) is mostly hidden by an obligatory bus ride (about 60 cents a person, and 1.20$ for a bike) from the Thai exit station to the Lao intake station, a distance of about a quarter mile. When I crossed last year further down the river, a somewhat elaborate system of stop lights allowed traffic to switch sides of the road, so I felt cheated on Brooke's behalf that she missed it. We traded American dollars for our visa, since all other currencies including Lao kip pay a premium, and off we went towards Huay Xai.

Brooke had previously found an activity called the Gibbon experience, which is the main reason we stayed in Huay Xai instead of moving further into Laos. After checking in with them for tomorrow's departure, we walked up to a small temple overlooking the city and were promptly caught in a thirty minute downpour, which we passed listening to monk chants while reading our kindles. Apart from unexpectedly high food costs, a welcome increase in the density  of sticky  rice  and a disappointing inability to convert our poor Thai into anything Lao, our first night in Laos seemed pretty similar to our last night in Thailand.

Had the same view from Thailand last night

However, the next morning began a departure from the routine. After spending two and a half hours in a car (our first in a  month) over potted asphalt and then rutted mud, we arrived at the village to start the Gibbon experience. Passing quickly through rice fields we had a short hike uphill through the jungle with about fifteen other foreigners before arriving at the first zip line. Our tour uses zip lines, some almost a kilometer long to dart from one side of a valley to the other, shortening the hikes and adding a dose of adrenaline. I was a little skeptical at first, but after getting a hang of riding, zipping over the forest ended up being even cooler than it sounded at first. There is definitely a technique to riding. You basically want to become as aerodynamic as possible by turning parallel to the line. It requires a surprising amount of abdominal not middle, since the position is almost like doing a crunch. On some lines the technique doesn't matter at all, but on others you fall short of the landing and have to tow yourself up the last part of the line if your technique is bad.

Brooke zipping to a treehouse

Even cooler than the zipline itself is the final destination - we spent the night in tree houses. These were not just any treehouse, but the coolest tree houses I have ever seen. Perched around hard wood trees thirty to forty meters above the forest floor, they have awesome views into the mountains and surrounding canopy. The tour operators had hauled mattress and mosquito nets to the houses, and also provided tasty Lao food, which was however, conspicuously lacking in spice. Our initial group broke in two, fortunately along the lines of smokers and non smokers, so we ended up with a French/German/English trilingual American, two French folks and two young British doctors. All in all a very cool group that made passing the nights quite fun.

The following morning we woke up at six to another rain storm, which kept us from our planned morning zipline. As we sat reading and talking, we began to hear occasional intermittent whistling noises from the jungle. At first we thought they were bird calls, but had too much variation, and as the calls built in frequency and intensity we saw movement in the trees a little over a hundred yards across the valley. Soon after two gibbons appeared, one black and one brown, using their long arms to swing from tree to tree. The brown one, a female, carried a baby on it's chest, which we could see with binoculars. Over the next five minutes, three more members of the gibbon family whooped and whistled over the ridge, passing out of sight and sound.

Living room window

Check out the link below, the video is too big to upload on the Lao internet

https://www.instagram.com/p/BcGyDslAs7q/

Roughly two thousand black crested gibbons remain in the wild, mostly in southern Yunnan China, but also in northern Laos. Taking to some of the local guides, in the past their songs would frequently be heard in the morning, but a combination of habitat destruction and hunting have made them highly endangered. Needless to say seeing them was a treat, but I think hearing them was actually more memorable. The noise is difficult to describe, and is unlike anything I'd heard, but could be loosely compared to the tropical bird the oropendula.

The female gibbon swooping through, the video above is better though!

The rain cleared in the afternoon, allowing us to enjoy the longest ziplines before taking another early night's sleep. Although we didn't see gibbons the next day, we amused ourselves listening to the British people be British as we hiked out. A rather uncomfortable ride in the back of a truck, supplemented with plenty of exhaust, led us back to Huay Xai. Our group of eight stuck together for a dinner of tom ka gai, sticky rice, laab and mango daquiris, discussing plans for the following day. The others all planned to take a boat two days down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, while Brooke and I would head northeast to Luang Namtha, retracing the road we had just come down. We had also considered taking the Lao side of the Mekong for a more remote route to the hills above Luang Namtha, but couldn't tell if these roads were rutted mud trails occasionally occupied by Burmese meth dealers or passable roads. Until we get our Lao feet under us, we decided to stick to the larger road.

Breakfast