TAKE A HIKE

Seeking some monkey magic in the treetops of Laos

By Lauren Farrow
Spending three days flying through canopies and
sleeping in tree houses was not what I had in mind
when I packed my bags for Laos recently.
I was not prepared for the cold weather in
the northern province of Bokeo. The only thing I
brought was a general fear of doing it rough.
But I threw caution to the wind when I hopped
on a boat from the former capital Luang Prabang,
on a river journey north seeking some monkey
magic.
After two long days, a collision with a Mekong
rock and some general fears about pneumonia, we
arrived in Huay Xai – a major port town, which
attracts tourists looking to cross into Thailand.
Other than that Huay Xai, with its tacky temple
and bad food, isn’t a show stopper. But a handful of
travellers do stay there for the Gibbon Experience
– an ecotourism project that takes eight people Making your way to the tree house accommodation involves a 400-metre cable ride through the canopy
into the nearby Bokeo Nature Reserve to hear the
sounds of the wild. It was from here that we started our trek into pressing David Attenborough with my moun-
The reserve is a 123,000 hectares of primary the forest, which has fallen prey to logging, slash- tain knowledge and adeptness in the wild, as I
forest, surrounded by mountains of up to 1500m. and-burn farming and poachers hunting ele- watched a small bird hop around the canopy.
At its base lies a small village of a dozen or so fam- phants, tigers, bears and black gibbons. But these musings vanished, when after the
ilies with their goats, cows and pigs. As we started walking, I pictured myself im- five hour trek we reached a metal cable that dis-

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36 VILLAGE VOICE DRUMMOYNE March