Day 107 – Thailand to Laos

January 20, 2010 - Chiang Mai, Thailand to Huay Xai, Laos

Our day begins with a 5:00am wake up… these early mornings are becoming a regular thing for us, which is a little concerning.

We finish packing our bags, hail a tuk-tuk and off to the bus station we go, arriving much earlier than we had anticipated. After Indonesia we’ve learned to give ourselves plenty of flex time – sometimes it works to our advantage and sometimes we arrive way too early.

Today we arrive way too early, so we take off our bags and grab a seat to wait.

It’s an eight hour bus ride to Chiang Khong, the Thai city used to cross the border into Laos. We arrive there in good time and hop in another tuk-tuk to take us to the Mekong river crossing.

Immigration is quick and painless, we get on the ferry for the 5 minute ride to Huay Xai, Laos and just like that, we are in Laos.

The on-arrival visa process takes about 20 minutes and after that, we walk up the road to find ourselves a place to sleep and grab some food.

Eric and I are thrilled to be in Huay Xai because this is where the Gibbon Experience is based out of.

The Gibbon Experience is a series of tree-houses located in the rooftops of the Bokeo Nature Reserve in Laos. Each of the tree-houses are connected back to the jungle by zip-line, so you spend your days hiking and zipping through the jungle and your evenings sleeping in the trees… just like gibbons. It’s a great eco-tourism project which provides employment for the local community and education to visitors and locals alike.

www.gibbonx.org

We’ve been looking forward to this adventure for a while and we’re scheduled to do it on January 22nd…

… which is perfect because I need a couple days of recovery. This morning, while we were waiting at the bus terminal, I lifted my backpack wrong and tweaked my back… ironically just after Eric offered to help me lift it and I told him I was okay.

“Doing nothing”, here I come.