Hello avid and probably confused readers!
I would like to apologize for this late entry on our Gibbon Experience as it was almost assuradly not quite as recent as the timing of this blog would indicate! try about 2 weeks or so back in time.
In any case we all enjoyed the Gibbon Experience immensely. Trekking through hilly and steamy jungle terrain was not nearly as high in quantity as our Nam Ha Challenge but it was certainly close to it in quality in some places. Anywho our first day consisted of jeeping in on a 4x4 truck a 3-4 hour drive if I remember correctly. The last hour and some change was spent on some really rough roads and muddy tracks festering at the bottom of almost every big hill. I think it is also safe to say that the drive back was just as entertaining.
But onwards to the meat of our adventure....and you will hardly believe it...We stayed in treehouses way up in the canopy or even above! wowzers! Falling out was a most guaranteed way of dying. Never fear all precautions for safety were set in place. Getting into the tree houses required a harness strapped to you and a roller thingamajig attached to the harness.....and lastly attaching the roller to a steel cable stretched out from a thick stable tree to the treehouse. A small push and off you went, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzziiiiiiipppppp! and presto there you were. It should also be mention that some of these ziplines spanned many gullys and at a maximum of about 300+ meters in length for some of them and had a glorious height...errr well high enough to see everything below you :D <---(thats a smily face)
Our days consisted of eating meals in tree houses zipping around and believe it,or not, that we never saw ONE gibbon. Other than that it was a fairly cool experience flying across gullies at about 40+ mph on a steel cable....and I heartily suggest signing on for a gibbon experience...if only for the zipping around HEHE!
PS. I was having a gastly time with my photobucket account....the computers here not really great as they upload 1 picture per 10 minutes or so. Ill be sending out a disc or something to each member of our trip so they can share with their friends and families sometime after the trip. PEACE OUT!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Jungle Excursion!
Greetings faithful blog minions!
For the past week, and a day on either side of the week for rest, our motley crew have been occupied with our group trekking choice of THE NAM HA CHALLENGE. This trek, picked from a website given to us by our trip leaders early in our trip, was a 7 day excursion into the jungles of luang namtha and around the Namtha national park. The terrain was very muddy and full of the most feared creature known to man! THE LEECH! these little critters were the plague of the jungle we were in. Not all the spiders and mosquito bites and the slipping and sliding down slick muddy paths all put together could rival the leeches' bloodsucking ways. In short the hike was challenging and we all struggled on different levels physically and mentally. Every day consisted of waking up around 7-7:30 and eating breakfast. Gear was packed damp sweaty clothes were donned. During this wakeup process sticky rice wrapped in palm leaves and water was distributed. Each day varied in length but a few things remained constant. Leeches, long stretches of thick mud, humidity/occasional rain. Around midday we would break for lunch and rest up for about an hour and the finish off the rest of the distance. Getting into "camp" was always a welcome reprieve from our blood thirsty parasites and a good opportunity to peel off our sweat soaked clothing and lay down and shower at some point while our guides prepped dinner for us. It is only now that I will mention that lunch and dinner were most definitley a group affair. Each one of us had our own plate piled with sticky rice but if you wanted soup meat or anything else with it we all found our hands or spoons dipping into the community dinner platers or bowls. During the entire trip we saw amazing scenery and small villages. I feel safe to say everyone was glad to have taken part in this adventure and even happier to get into clean clothes.......to be continued!
In my youthul impatience I have overseen a few more details that I feel need some more attention. I would like everyone to know that our guides were and still are the most amazing set of people we could have possibly gotten to lead our trip. Their names were Sai(pr:Sigh) and Me(haha no funny pr: there). Sai's grasp of english was simply amazing and all of us spent lots of time conversing with him about various aspects of our hike or just pleasurable things about life in general and even some more complex things. He was very aware of the group and called breaks for water or catching breath appropriately. Me was know to us and prove himself worthy of the nickname jungle man. He apparently didn't speak english except for a few words but I feel that I speak for the group that he definitly understood more of our conversations than he let on. He was a strong hiker and great companion for sitting around to lounge during breaks or in the evening. Both were great cooks and they cooked us all our meals!
The terrain itself was something most people in the world never get to experience. Mountains+Jungle made for a very rough terrain to hike in. The mountains themselves during our hikes upwards never really took more than an hour to get up and it was even faster down if it was muddy or just good trail, slower if it was wet rock. Seeing exposed views at the tops of these rolling mounds in the land made for a startling view of a very dramatic and extremly green landscape.
My trip leader thought it might be a good idea to include sounds we were exposed to during the hike. For the most part it wasn't very dramatic. In some areas you could hear cicadas whirring whatever sound parts furiously together to the point that you could swear they were everywhere....and now that I think about it they probably actually were.
All the towns we stopped at to spend the night in were very pleasent. The people in the village accomodated us and fed us their own food and provided sleeping arrangements to boot. It was an amazingly kind jesture on their part. The people here in Laos, all the places we have been, have been extrodinairily friendly!
ps. heres a link to some pics I have taken during the trip take a peek! its in the South east Asia album (ill be adding more as the trip progresses but since I started late it will take some time to catch up to our current place :D)
http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a10/Burtoxulous/Sout%20east%20Asia/
For the past week, and a day on either side of the week for rest, our motley crew have been occupied with our group trekking choice of THE NAM HA CHALLENGE. This trek, picked from a website given to us by our trip leaders early in our trip, was a 7 day excursion into the jungles of luang namtha and around the Namtha national park. The terrain was very muddy and full of the most feared creature known to man! THE LEECH! these little critters were the plague of the jungle we were in. Not all the spiders and mosquito bites and the slipping and sliding down slick muddy paths all put together could rival the leeches' bloodsucking ways. In short the hike was challenging and we all struggled on different levels physically and mentally. Every day consisted of waking up around 7-7:30 and eating breakfast. Gear was packed damp sweaty clothes were donned. During this wakeup process sticky rice wrapped in palm leaves and water was distributed. Each day varied in length but a few things remained constant. Leeches, long stretches of thick mud, humidity/occasional rain. Around midday we would break for lunch and rest up for about an hour and the finish off the rest of the distance. Getting into "camp" was always a welcome reprieve from our blood thirsty parasites and a good opportunity to peel off our sweat soaked clothing and lay down and shower at some point while our guides prepped dinner for us. It is only now that I will mention that lunch and dinner were most definitley a group affair. Each one of us had our own plate piled with sticky rice but if you wanted soup meat or anything else with it we all found our hands or spoons dipping into the community dinner platers or bowls. During the entire trip we saw amazing scenery and small villages. I feel safe to say everyone was glad to have taken part in this adventure and even happier to get into clean clothes.......to be continued!
In my youthul impatience I have overseen a few more details that I feel need some more attention. I would like everyone to know that our guides were and still are the most amazing set of people we could have possibly gotten to lead our trip. Their names were Sai(pr:Sigh) and Me(haha no funny pr: there). Sai's grasp of english was simply amazing and all of us spent lots of time conversing with him about various aspects of our hike or just pleasurable things about life in general and even some more complex things. He was very aware of the group and called breaks for water or catching breath appropriately. Me was know to us and prove himself worthy of the nickname jungle man. He apparently didn't speak english except for a few words but I feel that I speak for the group that he definitly understood more of our conversations than he let on. He was a strong hiker and great companion for sitting around to lounge during breaks or in the evening. Both were great cooks and they cooked us all our meals!
The terrain itself was something most people in the world never get to experience. Mountains+Jungle made for a very rough terrain to hike in. The mountains themselves during our hikes upwards never really took more than an hour to get up and it was even faster down if it was muddy or just good trail, slower if it was wet rock. Seeing exposed views at the tops of these rolling mounds in the land made for a startling view of a very dramatic and extremly green landscape.
My trip leader thought it might be a good idea to include sounds we were exposed to during the hike. For the most part it wasn't very dramatic. In some areas you could hear cicadas whirring whatever sound parts furiously together to the point that you could swear they were everywhere....and now that I think about it they probably actually were.
All the towns we stopped at to spend the night in were very pleasent. The people in the village accomodated us and fed us their own food and provided sleeping arrangements to boot. It was an amazingly kind jesture on their part. The people here in Laos, all the places we have been, have been extrodinairily friendly!
ps. heres a link to some pics I have taken during the trip take a peek! its in the South east Asia album (ill be adding more as the trip progresses but since I started late it will take some time to catch up to our current place :D)
http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a10/Burtoxulous/Sout%20east%20Asia/
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Only the beginning
After saying our last goodbyes in battambang we backed up and headed to Siem Reap. Seven hours of travel by boat and we arrived at our new home, Nita Villa, for a couple days. Our first day was spent touring a silk farm and learning the meticulous process of silk weaving, all the way from silk worm to silk shirt. Later that day we also got to see some stone and wood carving studios. Both of these places helped train locals in the trade and then hired them after the training period. The next day we visited one of the wonders of the world, Angkor Wat. The entire day was spent touring the massive site and ended with a not so climatic but very peaceful sunset on top of one of the outer lying temples. One free day later and we were on a plane to Laos, the second country we are visiting. Our first night we met with a carpediem contact named Dave who took us around and showed us the city of Vientiane. The next day we got to experience some local delicacies in the form of herbal sauna and traditional massage. We then traveled by bus to Loangprahbang, an event that ended up lasting 11 hours. Once we got here we got settled into a new guest house and woke up the next morning ready to explore. After deciding to rent bicycles we rode around all day visiting various memorials and wats. The next day, today, we went to see some epic waterfalls in the nearby mountains and after hiking up a near vertical trail to get to the top we cooled down in the pools of water at the bottom of the falls. Tomorrow we leave for our next activity, trekking for seven days in the mountains, at eight a.m.
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