On the 5th of February we literally signed our lives away at the Gibbon Experience office to spend three days and two nights zip lining and staying in a tree house 40 metres above ground.

The Gibbon Experience is a company that offers ziplines up to 500 metres long, in between their seven tree houses. It is located in the Nam Kan National park which is home to sambar deer, barking deer, leopards, tigers, wild pigs, over 100 species of birds, civets, giant squirrels, Asian Black bears, langurs, macaques, loris, snakes, lizards and GIBBONS.

We started off with a very bumpy ride in the back of a Ute up to the national park site where we received our harnesses and safety briefings. We then started zip lining through the tree top canopy to arrive at our accomodation for two nights, treehouse number 1.

Our tree house is said to have one of the best places to see and hear gibbons as a group of 6 live in the trees near by. Matt and I woke up before the sunlight both mornings to spot some wildlife. It is a pretty amazing experience watching the jungle both go to sleep and wake up as the sun comes up.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to see any gibbons but we did hear them calling both mornings just around the bend. We saw a big squirrel and I heard what was identified by our guide as a possible bear guarding its territory at 1:00am.

We stayed in our tree house with 7 others, each with our own area to sleep in super warm and cosy beds. Breakfast and dinner were ziplined in from the nearby kitchen hut.

Going to the bathroom with a head torch on is not a great idea as the bathroom and shower area was fully open looking out to the canopy, meaning huge moths love to fly at your face, so scary.

We ziplined for the full three days and got to visit the other tree houses during the day. They are all incredibly intricate in their building and feel very safe. The only one Matt had to lie in the centre of was tree house five, which was at the edge of the canopy with a big drop down. Zipping out of that one was scary too.

We visited a village on the way and met the cutest little monkey. He lost his mother and wandered into the village at around 2 days old. The people at the village fed him and have tried multiple times in the past three months to release him back to the wild. Unfortunately he doesn’t want to return to the wild so just hangs about the village. It’s a shame that he has to be tied up because he’s too naughty and wrecks havoc in their houses.

The Gibbon Experience is an awesome company that is working hard to protect the jungle and it’s animals in Laos. It was a pretty surreal three days and we are happy to be back on land 😝

We didn’t use our camera on the zip lines due to safety but managed to get some video footage on the go pro. I have extracted some still shots from the video footage.

Go pro pictures while zipping

Our tree house

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