Laos

The Gibbon Experience | 16 Mar 2006

A detour brought on by a word-of-mouth recommendation that caused me to overstay my 15-day Laos visa, the Gibbon Experience was well worth the $10 fine I had to pay. It's a project that works closely with the local population to guard and conserve the dwindling forest areas and its resident gibbon population. With a series of four tree houses perched 40m up high in the forest canopy, reached by cabling across the treetops, we were woken at dawn by a cacophony of sounds the most spectacular of which was the singing of the gibbons, the most complex vocalisation of any mammal. While the noise was incredible, the dense foliage hid the perpetrators from view (anyone know the scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail where they're making the Trojan rabbit in the forest and all these noises are coming from the woods but the French can't see anything?? That was me!). Anyway, all in all a fabulous experience, though disappointed not to see these amazing creatures, a risk you take with anything involving unpredictable nature.

Locations Visited: None specified.

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