The Gibbons Experience (read: The Hike-seven-hours-a-day-and-eat-crappy-food Experience)

I think "Experience" is the perfect way to explain my days in Laos.  Or hell.  Either way, I'm glad I saw what I saw, but I never want to do it again.  I was living in the pages of National Geographic for 5 days.  I couldn't believe it.  Let me count the ways:

• babies didn't wear clothes
• no one really wore shoes
• electricity was a luxury - if you could find it
• i drank water that was purified with "tablets" - i still don't believe the water was purified
• chicken, buffaloes, pigs and horses roamed the streets

anyways - I went to Laos to do the Gibbons Experience.  Abby and I were fortunate enough to get (read: have) to do the Waterfall experience, which takes you deeper in the jungle and involves more hiking every day.  great.  we were supposed to see lots of jungle animals - i saw two: water buffaloes and leeches.  two animals which i really never want to see again.  we ate food that tasted like it had been cooked in 1965.  the rice was hard and they served us tomatoes and spinach cooked with enough salt to dry up lake michigan.  we had to hike like 5, 6 or 7 hours a day, while carrying our stuff with us, through the jungle.  uphill, downhill, whatever.  oh and we lived in a treehouse, which everyone seemed to think was really cool but me.  let's see: no running water, no electricity, bad food, "mattresses" as thin as ice, and mosquito nets to protect us from the wonderful (read: deadly) wildlife of the jungle.  oh yeah, i'm forgetting one thing: rats.  yes, rats.  they can climb trees 600 ft because of the smell of our wonderful leftover food in the treehouse.  one even crawled over abby one night...

one of the highlights of the trip was the zipline network.  that was cool.  it was crazy because we were so high over the jungle... i forgot how high but i think we were 200m over the ground, which is like 600 ft.  and the longest zipline was 700m, which is a half a mile long across the jungle.  it was cool, but at some points really scary.  like coming into one of our treehouses, it was in the middle of nowhere with nothing else around it and i didn't make it all the way on the zipline.  so there i was, hanging out 600 ft above the ground then i have to pull myself in to the treehouse.  i can't really repeat the words that came out my mouth at that moment...  but i probably scared away all the "gibbons" - i still don't believe there are gibbons in that jungle.  i think it's a big conspiracy and they have been extinct for years....

anyways, i'm going to post some pics but i don't want to talk about it anymore.  I'm glad I saw what life inside National Geographic is like - but I can't handle it.  It made Thailand look like paradise and the United States look like Heaven.  I just can't believe that people live without cell phones, computers and communication.  It was crazy when I realized that they didn't need any of that because all of the people they needed to communicate with were in their village.  they didn't really know anyone else out in the world.  it just blows my mind that they've probably never seen images of the rest of the world.  they don't have any source of news from the world, either.  no tv, magazines or newspapers.  they completely lead a self-sustaining lifestyle.

oh, and the average salary for our tour guides was $40 USD a month.   A MONTH!!  crazy...

oh and one more thing.  there's like this understood curfew in Laos.  we were at the bar just starting our night at like 10 pm.  30 minutes later - it's last call.  yes 10:30 was last call....  and by 11 pm everyone was gone.  the whole town turned into a ghost town at 11 pm.  it was very strange and very different from anywhere i've ever been, especially bangkok.

well here's some pics from my trip to the jungle.

Houay-xai, the village in Laos where we stayed.  yes, these wom

en are driving their motorbikes with umbrellas-ella-ella-ey-ey-ey.

the view in the jungle (one of the highlights).  every morning was foggy

the zip line (another highlight)

me on the zipline

the group in the treehouse

well in a matter of hours we are all leaving for Chiang Mai for the Songkran Festival.  (Click the link for more information.)  But basically it's the Thai New Year.  being a buddhist holiday, it revolves around paying respect to buddha, monks and elders.  the way they pay respect during songkran is by washing water over these people.  but it has basically adapted into the worlds largest water fight for days and days with water guns, buckets, water balloons.  and the goal is to get anyone you see as wet as possible.  so it should be a good time.