The first day of the journey to the border was pretty uneventful, the boat wasn't too full as most people seem to travel the country in the opposite direction, but most people ended up sitting on the floor as the seats were so uncomfortable! It was a long day but we eventually made it to the half way point at Pak Beng, where we stayed for the night.

The next day we met two girls who were on our boat the day before, and they told us we were headed in the wrong direction for our boat! So we walked to the other end of town with them, until they stopped at a shop and unfortunately we didn't. For some reason we started following two other people back to the end of town that we had started, along the beach, pretty hard work with all our bags and in flip flops! We were then told by the boats there that we should be at the other end, so back across the sand we went! Finally got on a boat that was much more crowded and found a seat and started to chill out, until we discovered this boat was going back to Luang Prabang! We eventually managed to dig our bags back out but were told that the Huay Xai boat had already left! Luckily we found some locals who were headed in that direction, and got a lift with them, on an almost empty boat with much comfier seats! So far so good...

About eight hours later we stopped at a small village on the side of the river, which didn't look much like a border town to us! A little worried, we started negotiations with the boat driver, who suddenly conveniently lost the ability to speak English. We eventually discovered that we were 3 hours from Huay Xai, the boat wouldn't be going any further as it was getting dark, and we definitely weren't going to get any money back! We needed to be in Huay Xai by 7pm to register for the Gibbon Experience which left the next day at 8am, so waiting til the morning wasn't an option. We began discussions with a local who could drive us there, it was obvious we were getting ripped off but we couldn't do much about it!

We eventually arrived in Huay Xai about 9pm, with the Gibbon office closed, so we checked in to a nearby guesthouse. Luckily we went to the office first thing the next morning and managed to register! A group of 6 of us set off on the 3.5 hour truck journey to Bokeo Province Reserve, the forest that we would be staying in for the next 3 days. Luckily we all got on well and had a good laugh.

We trekked up into the forest for about an hour before arriving at the start of the zip lines - which gave you a very cool perspective looking down at the trees. We stayed in Treehouse 5, the furthest away, so there was lots more trekking up and down the narrow forest paths in between zips before we got there. We were about 80m above the ground and entry and exit was via cable - very cool! The treehouse was very basic but you got an awesome view from the squat loo, and looking down through the shower tray you could just see the next canopy layer a long way down! It had no walls so we could hear all the birds and insects really well, but unfortunately no gibbons sang to us! Food came from cooks who lived in the forest just a cable away - we could hear their roosters and baby crying despitebeing so isolated! We named it rice and vegetable slop - it just about kept us going but we were all looking forward to some better food on our return to Huay Xai!

The next morning ourguide arrived at about 7am with breakfast and said that if we wnted him to show us around we could call at his house to fetch him. Eager to make the most of our time we were all ready and raring to go by 8, and he looked a bit surprised at our arrival. We set off and trekked through the forest for about an hour - some of the path was pretty difficult going but we thought it would be worth it to access the other cables and to explore more of the forest. We eventually arrived at a cable and set off along it, only to find we were back at our treehouse at 9.30! Our guide then told Lar, who luckily is from Laos and proved an invaluable translator for the whole trip, that we were finished for the day and should relax, ready for a long day the next day! I think the disbelief on all our faces showed and eventually he offered to take us to the waterfall later that day. We all did the short loop of cables around our treehouse a few more times that morning before lunch, and then set off to find the waterfall. We discovered through Lar that the guides are only paid $2 a day, which explained some of their lack of enthusiasm, and they couldn't believe how much we had paid to go on the trip, when we could have gone to a zoo! The guides sang and shouted most of the way to the waterfall, which ruined most chances of wildlife encounters, but we went through primary forest which was a much more jungly environment. The project is supposed to be ecotourism at its best, conserving the environment through the locals, however it seems to have gone wrong somewhere as the guides didn't like their jobs and couldn't really speak English!

When we arrived at the waterfall it turned out to just be a river, and none of us were keen to stay around that long or go for a swim since the discovery of leeches in our shoes and up our legs! When we got back to the treehouse we realised that we hadn't been able to remove them all, and I had three holes in my leg that took ages to stop bleeding! We had an early night as we were due up at 4am the next day to hunt for gibbons and trek to the other treehouses, where we would have better access to the cable system.

The wake up call was a bit of a struggle but the zip ride out of the treehouse in the dark woke us up. We then had to trek a difficult path, which sometimes had steep drops to the side of it, in the dark! It started off freezing but we were all soon far too hot. We made it to a spot where gibbons sometimes played in the trees in about half the usual time according to the guides (probably because we were all scrared to stop and get attacked by leeches!), but this meant that we sat around for about an hour waiting for the sun to rise and the gibbons to come out. By now we were all freezing again, so we went back to the main path to get fleeces, and the guide lit a fire. We were all quite worried it would cause a forest fire but luckily it didn't! We expected to go back and hunt for gibbons now that it was the right time but the guide led us off back towards the other treehouses, where we grabbed some sticky rice for breakfast and then headed to explore the area by zip. One moment of excitement we though we had found a gibbon swinging through the trees, but it turned out to be a Giant Squirrel - still pretty cool. We did a few loops through the different canopy layers before it was time to head back to the village, where we were picked up and taken back to Huay Xai. Unfotunately we didn'tget to see or her the gibbons, but we did see a monkey - very cute but naughty who lived with the guides!

It was an amazing experience to live in that way in the forest, but a shame we didn't experience any gibbons! The project seems a great idea, although all the ideals don't seem to have made it through to the locals! Hopefully as it expands it will gain local support, as it is claimed they plan to hand the programme over to the locals once it is properly in place, and hopefully the forest won't become to overrun by tourists! The guide told Lar that since the tourists had started coming, the gibbons had gone!

We met up in Huay Xai that evening for a final group meal, before we crossed the border to Chiang Kong in Thailand the next day.