Jaz and Kate's Escape: Nam Ha National Park, Laos

First things first, despite all of my fears and misgivings, we survived the Laotian jungle! Although with no animal spottings sadly.

On Sunday, we ventured out of Thailand across the border into a tiny town known as all of the following: Houayxaiy, Houyxay, houexai, houysuia, etc. I have no idea how to either spell or say it at this point despite having slept there for two nights now. It is in the town that the Gibbon Experience office is located. With the GE, we ventured into the Nam Ha national park to search for Gibbons and other wildlife while also getting to hike, zip line, and sleep in tree houses. Although, I was the one who initially encouraged us to do this trip, I didn't use my full brain power to figure out that an airborn jungle experience might not be ideal for some one with a neurotic fear of heights. Also after a little research it's easy to find more than one horror story about GE as it is not the most safety conscious organization. However, it is unfair to expect Western-level safety equipment when travelling through a developing country. My fears were not elided when at 8:30am right before the safety video we were all handed a can of beer Laos. The video helpfully informed us that if we had trouble understanding the guides safety instructions we should try to teach them English! At this point I'm convinced that I will tumble head first into the jungle from great heights.

But Jasmine and Anna frogmarched me into the tuk tuk (imagine a pick up truck with a metal wire frame pretending to be a cab) and we were off to the jungle. And man, am I so thankful that we had the opportunity to do this. It was absolutely stunning. I can't do justice to our experience with words. Even the pictures don't really come close to capturing all we saw, but I hope you can sort of fathom our experience after this.

I made the girls take a before picture as I thought we'd be broken and bloodied by the end. Whoops! We had to hike with our harnesses on.

The trip started with a long hike

First past fields of these guys.

Over lots of rickety bamboo bridges

Up lots of very steep hills. It was a serious workout. Uphill both ways!

Until we finally reached the zip lines. Only I could really figure it out at first

Anna's legs were too long.

Jasmine ziplined into a lake. (Video to come).

I, however, managed it panic-free. (Ziplining into tree house).

Sometimes we couldn't make it all the way to the end. We wouldn't make the running leaps and body contortions our guides did to accomplish this feat. Our arms are a little sore from all the repelling.

But eventually Jasmine and Anna got the hang of it too!

The treehouses we stayed in were awesome!! The food was great. Really fresh with lots of vegetables. And the guides would zip over every morning and evening with a kettle of boiling water to make us tea and coffee. Plus I mean you really can't beat the view. Even the bathroom was awesome:

You did have to be careful when timing your showers. As people could zip right passed the open concept design.

When night came we had lots of amusement. Playing Chinese checkers in our tree fort!

On the second night, Anna and Jasmine were kept up by animals that had infiltrated the tree house.

Due to this sign, I can only assume that they were tree rats who had come to accuse us of lying....

One of the other girls on our trip was a yoga instructor. So after two days of intense hiking she kindly led us through a restorative yoga class. There wasn't that much space in the house so we arranged ourselves around the zip line entrance. When the two Laos guides showed up with dinner, one shouted from midzip, "WHAT are you girls doing!?" Clearly thought we were crazy white girls as we all did the downward dog.

On the second day, jasmine stayed behind in the afternoon while the rest of the group went zipping. (She is midway through a truly excellent book called The Luminaries. It's hard to do anything else when you could be reading it). Anyways she thought she discovered a new kind of pink gibbon in the woods!

But after zooming in with the camera, it turned out to be just Anna

Anyways we had a wonderful time. I have far too many pictures of the experience but below are some more gems for you to peruse. We are now off to Luang Prabang!