The Gibbon Experience is an innovative forest conservation project in northwestern Laos, where visitors spend three days living in treehouses built 40 metres above the ground, reachable only by a network of ziplines and a few short hikes.

A few months ago, I decided to give it a try. It takes place in the Bokeo Nature Reserve, a 123,000-hectare area in the province of Bokeo, which shares a border with Myanmar and Thailand.



At present, Lao National Parks have no forest guards for day-to-day protection. Only the forest guards in the Bokeo Nature Reserve receive a salary; fully funded by The Gibbon Experience. They presently monitor one third of the 123,000-hectare reserve.

There were two trip options when I went: Classic Experience and Waterfall Experience. The Waterfall option takes you further into the forest and has more required trekking, two-three hours/day. I tried to book the Waterfall trip and even planned my travel dates around it since the trips leave on alternating dates, but due to a miscommunication with the office I ended up on the Classic. It turned out that all the Waterfall trips were fully booked for weeks by the time I tried to reserve a spot so there’s no way I could have done it anyway.

But it didn’t really matter which trip I was on, because with the Classic Experience I had lots of free time to do all the extra trekking I wanted, including a visit to Treehouse #5 where the Waterfall people stayed.

Small groups of people travel into the forest together on alternating days; in our group there were two families with a total of five kids aged four-10 or so, an American/Thai couple, two English girls and me. The families were in Treehouse #1, the couple in #2, and I was stuck in #3 with the cute English girls. Treehouse #3 was the best of the three in my opinion, though the others were better for playing on ziplines.

After watching a video on how to use the ziplines, we were shuttled three hours from the town of Huay Xai on the Thai border to Ban Toup, a small village on the border of the nature reserve. We were joined there by a small monkey and a black bear cub who were both quite cute, and constantly at each other’s throats. They seemed fairly evenly matched now but I wouldn’t give the monkey very good odds once the bear has grown a bit more.

From there we walked for about an hour to a building near Treehouse #1 where our meals were prepared, where we were each given a harness to use on the ziplines connecting the treehouses; these are like normal rock climbing harnesses except for an extra little roller/brake contraption and redundant safety rope and carabiner attached to them.

We walked to the first zipline leading to Treehouse #1. The kids were taken across by guides on the first few zips but the older ones were allowed to go on their own after a while.

We spent the next few days living in treehouses, hiking through the forest and playing around on the ziplines. There are a total of seven ziplines leading to Treehouse #3; I think the longest one is about one km long.

The treehouses were pretty impressive: each has running water from a nearby spring, there’s a shower and toilet, sinks in the kitchen and bathroom, and all the water is completely safe to drink. The toilet is just a normal squat toilet with nothing underneath it but a 40m drop to the forest floor. I heard there are pigs at Treehouse #1 that help clean up the mess; on Day 2 when we were eating pork sausages for dinner I remarked on this beautiful circle of life.

The beds were quite comfortable, with duvets and thick mosquito nets. The shower looked pretty fun because you could see right down into the forest through a bamboo grate, but I never used it because it and the toilet were constantly swarming with hornets.

The views from the treehouses were fantastic, especially at dawn and sunset.

The guides were amazingly well-tuned to the weather: they told us to put our harnesses on because they could hear strong winds coming, when all I could hear were crickets and birds. Sure enough a while later it got quite windy, and they correctly predicted other weather events as well.

However, although the guides were good weather forecaster, they weren’t exactly the way their brochures portrayed them as. The marketing info says the trips include “Local guides eager to show you the forest and its inhabitants”, but I would replace “eager” with “reluctantly willing”. I asked a couple times about going for a walk to see animals or going for a guided walk the next morning, but only got confusion and “no animals” as a response.

I think the more experienced guides were assigned to the tree house with the kids, so the ones we had were fairly new (a couple of them said they had had this job for three months), and the main issue was the language barrier between us. I expect the more experienced guides would have done much more in terms of teaching us about the forest, animals, treehouses and the conservation programme.



Later, we made our way out of the reserve, stopping to watch the monkey and bear scrap for a while. It was amazingly fun to watch; they’re both so cute and have such different fighting styles: the monkey is really quick and agile, and the bear is slow and clumsy but more powerful.

All in all it was a fantastic experience that I would recommend to anyone, in spite of disappointment with the guides. I expect the guides would be better on the average than the ones we had, and I think they would have done the guided walks if I had pushed them a bit more.

Source: http://news.brunei.fm/2010/03/21/hanging-around-in-laos-forest/

Photo: Monks observe the scenery during sunset at Vat Phou Ngoy temple in Champassak province.

In Champassak province there are lots of attractive tourist sites including Vat Phou, Khon Phapheng, Tad Fan and Pha Suam waterfalls; apart from these places there are also other mysterious sites that are less well known such as Vat Phou Ngoy.

Only local people know about this temple, which has a relaxing atmosphere and views of the Mekong River and islands.

The temple is included in some package tours, which suggest visitors “spend the night at Vat Phou Ngoy and enjoy the wonderful panoramic views of the sunset over the Mekong.” These tours help promote the temple which sits in the shadow of more popular tourists sites in the province...more

Vat Phou Ngoy is located on Malong hill in the area of Pakhor village, Champassak district. Monk Bounmak Thitipannyo, the temple's first abbot, founded it in the 1930s.

An official at the Champassak Tourism Information Centre, Mr Phonesavanh Chanthalangsy said, “There are lots of attractive sites at this temple. Visitors can walk to the south of the temple where they can enjoy the wonderful panorama of the islands located in the Mekong River. Local people call it the second Si Phan Don (4,000 Islands). It is a place where visitors can relax, especially at sunset during the dry season.”

This viewing point is particularly popular with visitors who love photography because they can capture the natural scenes of the river and the lifestyle of people fishing and working along the bank of the river, which reflects the importance of the Mekong in the way of life of people in the area.

“Walking to the south-west of the temple, visitors can find three mysterious large holes in the ground that are similar to wells,” said Mr Phonesavanh. “They are different sizes, the biggest one has a radius of 40cm and is 85cm deep, the second one is 30cm across and 70cm deep while the smallest one has a radius of 20cm and is 60cm deep.”

Mr Phonesavanh said the elders in the village tell of the temple's very long history and a local legend which says, that before the temple was built, on every full moon a magical light flowed through the air and disappeared into the three holes. The mysterious incident has not happened since the temple was built.

Every full moon in February there is an annual festival at Vat Phou Ngoy and people from around the country flock to the temple to celebrate and give offerings.

Another special element of the temple is its seven cloisters that are made from wood instead of the usual concrete.

For visitors who come during the rainy season, the views of the Mekong are not as spectacular as in the dry season, but they have the chance to see other attractions and a wonderful waterfall located to the west of the temple.

Originally, the path to the temple was made of natural stones collected nearby, but renovations in 2004 saw the stones replaced with concrete and there are now 834 steps climbing the 90m to the top.

With construction underway on a new road that will make it easier for tourist to access the temple, the Champassak Tourism Office, together with provincial and district authorities, is preparing to develop the temple into a natural and cultural tourism site to cater for an increase in visitors which will come once the road has been completed.

Vientianetimes

(KPL) A tourism information center was built recently in Parkbeng district with 287 million kip of government fund.

The center was considered as the main potential for attracting the tourist and helping them to save the time to looking for the tourist sites in the province.

In the first six months of 2007-2008 period, the Parkbang district has received 24,548 tourists, 1,140 of which was local tourists and 23,307 foreign tourists with able to create income about 6.137 billion kip.

To day, the Parkbeng district has one hotel, 2 resorts and 13 guesthouses with 216 rooms and 20 restaurants.

photo: Hotel "La Résidence Phou Vao", Luang Prabang, Laos

Hotel and guesthouse proprietors in Luang Prabang province have more than doubled the prices charged for accommodation on their premises, due to increasing tourist numbers over the high season.

Provincial tourism officials confirm that prices are, however, still below the ceiling rate placed on prices by the provincial authorities, and that the increases in room rates have had no visible negative impact on the visiting tourists.

The president of the Luang Prabang Hotel and Guesthouse Association, Mr Khoun Chanthaboupha, said last week that accommodation providers in the world heritage town began to increase their service charges early this month. As tourist numbers dramatically increased, the number of available guesthouse and hotel rooms became insufficient to meet customer demands.

According to Mr Khoun, prices for a guesthouse room are currently ranging from 140,475 kip (US$15) to 936,500 kip (US$100) per night; a hotel room can fetch anywhere from 936,500 kip (US$100) to 4.6 million kip (US$500) per night.

The normal price for a guesthouse room ranges from 46,780 kip (US $5) to 467,800 kip (US $50), and a hotel room will not cost above 2.8 million kip (US $300).

Mr Khoun noted that the present prices found in the province are still under the ceiling rates established by the Provincial Tourism Administration. He said that the administration considered the increases in price reasonable, and as they were only seasonal, authorities did not wish to meddle with the business affairs of the sector.

He confirmed that the accommodation increases were not due to increases in the price of fuel and other goods on the market, but were rather a seasonal event, seen every year at this time as both domestic and foreign traveller numbers increase. He added that business people only have the chance to readily earn money du ring this time of the year.

“From early December to late January is the country's peak tourist season, and all accommodation providers seize the opportunity to increase the charges for their rooms,” he told Vientiane Times during a visit to Vientiane last week.

“During this time, guesthouse and hotels owners do not have to compete with each other to please customers and offer special prices to attract them to their establishments.”

Mr Khoun said that the only way to reduce the costs of accommodation at the more popular holiday destinations, and to make domestic travel to places like Luang Prabang during the season possible for all Lao nationals, was to encourage the private sector to build more guesthouses and hotels.

Luang Prabang currently has about 16,000 rooms available in guesthouses and hotels.

He said that Luang Prabang was experiencing difficulty in increasing the availability of room numbers, due to the enforcement of strict world heritage preservation rules, which limit the construction of high-rise buildings, and subsequently fuels the increases in land prices on which to build further guesthouses and hotels.

He said that many of the residents in the town have turned their houses into modest guesthouses. The rooms do not, however, always meet the demands of customers.

By Ekaphone Phouthonesy

Vientianetimes