Laos -- Houay Xai and the Treehouse Experience

A three hour bus ride and a small boat ride across the Mekong later, we found ourselves in Laos. Houay Xai is the border town and consists mainly of one street. To get into Laos, you have to purchase a visa upon arrival. Our guidebook says it costs anywhere between $30-$45, which is a bit of a range. Turns out you only get the lower end of the scale if you pay in US$. For a communist country, I found it a tad absurd. By paying in Thai baht, you pay closer to $55, but if you pay in the local currency, Laos kip, you pay around $45. $15 more in the local currency. Reminder to self: always travel with US dollars!  

One last note about money in Laos. The maximum ATM withdrawal (so far) is 1 million kip (that’s about $130 US) of which you pay around $10 in conversion and ATM fees. Rip, rip, rip. I still find using ATMs to be the most convenient and close to the cheapest way to work in foreign currency. But the system is still flawed I tell you! 

Anyway, after figuring out the money situation, we began the accommodation ritual. Approaching a few of the hostels and guest houses featured in the Lonely Planet (and those nearby that look okay), checking out the rooms and prices, haggling a little, then getting so tired of carrying around a hulking backpack and deciding on the least offensive accommodation. After settling into a place that was decently clean, had a ceiling fan and a great view of the Mekong, we looked for food then went to the office for the tour we were taking the following day—and our only reason for staying at Houay Xai in the first place. 

The Lonely Planet for southeast Asia has a list of the top 30 or so things to do in the area. The Gibbon Experience in Laos is listed as number three. Out in the jungle in the Bokeo Natural Reserve, they discovered a few Gibbon colonies and someone came up with the bright idea of marketing this to tourists. But they didn’t stop at the gibbons. They put up a series of trekking trails, ziplines, and treehouses (all reportedly eco-friendly)and put a sizable price tag on the experience. We thought it sounded like a great plan, a bit of a hike, ziplining through the rainforest, and staying overnight in a treehouse and seeing the wildlife. Awesome! While there were certainly amazing parts about it, it wasn’t exactly the “gibbon” experience. It was more like the “treehouse” experience. 

We woke up to a rainy day—which is nothing new, it’s monsoon season—and headed to the office. There were seven other tourists there and we were looking forward to a fun, shared experience. Well, it turns out that all of those seven people had signed up for the three-day, two-night experience. We, knowing it was the wet season and having been forewarned that the accommodation wasn’t quite up to scratch, opted for the two-day, one-night experience. Hey look, the two of us doing our own thing. Again! J We grabbed our day packs, packed according to their preparation list, and headed out. A one-hour drive and we arrived at the trailhead, which was actually a convenience store (hut) with 10 Laos dudes just…hanging out. After 20 minutes or so, they invited us to eat some fruit. Another 20 minutes later, they introduced one of our guides, Pot. Our other guide didn’t really talk, but he struck out along with us in the rain.  

Kitted up in our harnesses, we came to our first zipline in the first five minutes, going across a little river. Holy shit that ziplining is freaky! It was only a short one, but I was so glad we at least had that little introductory zipline before getting to the others that followed…. The trailhead was a mess of unavoidable mud up to our ankles—so long, pretty green shoes. Our guides, who do this every day, both had rubber boots on to “keep out the leeches”. This had me paranoid the entire hike since I’ve never come face to face with a leech. Anxiety! Luckily I made it there and back, leech-less record intact. Thank goodness. 

After hiking uphill through a slippery muddy mess and listening to our second guide, Rambo, whistle Titanic and Bruno Mars, we made it to the first of five ziplines. And one at a time (the guides oh so comfortable in their jungle playground), we hung our karabiners on the line and slid out of the canopy. After a hearty scream/yell and a few f-bombs, I remembered the instructions to remain quiet (to not scare away the wildlife) and again I found myself thinking, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe.” It was unbelievable. After stepping off the platform, you slowly speed up and come out of the tree canopy and find yourself a hundred meters off the ground flying through the air. The rain strikes harder, the breeze flies in your face and you sit in awe of the beauty surrounding you. Greenery left and right and wisps of clouds moving through the jungle. And a very real awareness of your mortality. I’m a light adventure sports person myself. I’ve done paragliding and hang gliding, but those both pale in comparison to ziplining. I felt so much less secure, literally hanging off of a little metal wire strung in between two trees, sometimes 1,000 meters apart. Sometimes when you reach the end, you have to brake hard so you don’t smash into the tree at the end. But mostly, I didn’t make it all the way to the end and had to pull myself back to the platform hand over hand. That made my body ache more than the hiking. 

 

 

 

Three hours of hiking and ziplining and we zipped into our treehouse. Three connected platforms sitting in a tree, which felt like 100 meters off the ground (but was probably only 10-20). I was completely freaked out. After taking off my muddy shoes and being assured that I was leech-free, I headed over to the “bathroom” to wash the mud off. The floor was made up of wooden slats that you could see through right down into the canopy. For the rest of our trip I went to the bathroom as scarcely as possible. And while Marcus and our guides went right up to the edge of the platforms, I contented myself with the parts of the platform that were closest to the tree and had at least one other platform below it. I am not one to pride myself on my courage of heights.  

After telling us that we’d be joined by the other group of hikers later, the guides took their leave and said they’d be back in three hours to let us enjoy the scenery. After looking fruitlessly for any signs of wildlife, we settled down to read and nap. When the guides did come back, the guides changed their story (they probably didn’t understand my question in the first place), letting us know that the two of us were staying in the treehouse by ourselves. The other hikers were staying in a different treehouse and the guides were staying in their own camp. They dropped off dinner and took off. Alone again! The food was pretty good for camp grub, though they must’ve thought we were fatties. They gave a lot of food. And the view was probably the best I’ve ever had to accompany my dinner. It was stunning. 

Before taking off, the guides also set up our treehouse tent, which was pretty cool. I was excited to be free of mosquitoes until they told us to make sure we tucked in the bottoms on all sides to make sure the rats wouldn’t get in. Awesome. Yet another thing to distract me from sleep. 

 

We ate, then as dusk was falling and the rain letting up, the mosquitoes came out—and I took refuge in the tent (they had mosquito coils but no lighters) and proceeded to spend the next 12 hours under said tent. As if the height, mosquitoes and potential rats (and tigers—there are tigers somewhere in that jungle) weren’t enough to keep my mind from drifting to sleep, the cicadas struck up their song. There was one particularly loud cicada in our tree and it was the most ridiculously loud and close cicada I’ve ever heard in my life! The first time Marcus heard these particular cicadas, he thought it was a chainsaw. But this one, located somewhere above our heads, sounded like some alien spaceship taking off very slowly. Thank goodness for earplugs. Though they also blocked out the morning gibbon singing. Not that we knew what the gibbons’ song sounded like. The guides, other than answering our question about the general direction we should look for the gibbons, gave us absolutely no other information about the forest. No information about other wildlife, no information about any of the plants and trees we saw along the way… yes, it was very lacking in information.  

6:30am and the guides returned to take us out ziplining in the morning. Thankfully the rain had stopped! Ziplining in dry weather was rather magnificent and it was nice to see what it was like outside of the dreary rain.

After another five ziplines, we returned for breakfast…where the guides again left us for the next three and a half hours. We figure that of the two days of the tour, we spent about 18 hours of it in the treehouse. In the treehouse, we had precisely three wildlife sightings. I saw two birds and Marcus saw a squirrel. Then on our hike back to civilization (which was thankfully dry!) Marcus spotted the red snake that was sitting in the middle of the trail that our guide had merely stepped over. I adore Marcus’s awareness and observation skills. I probably would have stepped right over it as well. The whole time we hiked I spent looking at my feet trying to avoid stepping in slippery muddy spots. I even ran into a tree once, my focus was so strongly downwards. 

Although I sprayed all of my bare skin with mosquito repellent, they still managed to bite through my clothes. Thankfully I was wearing a tank top under my t-shirt and they only got me through the shirt sleeves, but damn! They bit through so much I couldn’t even count the number of bites. There were bites on top of bites, I had a veritable mountain rage of mosquito bites on each shoulder. Ugh. 

Reaching the end of our hike was a relief. I couldn’t wait to get back to a guesthouse, take a shower and douse myself in tea tree oil. I’d like to think that I’m okay with the outdoors. And the mud wasn’t too bad. The fact that I smelled like I’d bathed in my own sweat wasn’t even that bad. But the mosquitoes are unbearable. They zap my happiness levels quick smart.  

All in all, the ziplines and the scenery were amazing. The treehouse was pretty fantastic, too. But the prolonged periods spent sitting in the treehouse coupled with the lack of information about what was surrounding distracted from the overall experience.  

We came back to town, turned in our honest evaluation forms, showered, shared a delicious Laos iced coffee, and scoped out the next part of our trip. Two days on a slow ferry down to Luang Prabang.