Jennatool

the gibbon project is a conservation project in one of the jungles to preserve the jungle and the gibbons especially that live there. they have zip wires round thejungle so as not to disturbe the jungle floor too much and 5 tree houses about 40m above ground.

left houy xia at about 7.30 to travel for 3 hours along the main road between thailand and china. you would imagine a nice ‘main’ road no such luck just as bad as all the other roads in this country if not worse! but we soon got to this small village where we stopped and started on our hike into the jungle. this was the first time it actually looked like jungle, quite often they call it jungle but its more like a big forest. this time though it was full of little streams hanging vines and bamboo everywhere. we walked for a bout an hour then got to the’kitchen’ in the middle of the jungle. as we sat here we noticed a tiny animal on the floor it was a baby bear crawling round. in thailand people hunt the adult animals and kill them to take the babies and sell them at markets for pets. the people in the local village had clubbed together to buy the bear and donated it to the gibbon experiance to try and give it a better life. their plan was to find an area for it and release it when it was old enough and see if it would learn to hunt on its own if not they would feed it just by putting food there for it so atleast it would be semi wild. not ideal but better than the life it could of had in some ones apartment! there were also two pet monkeys there these were tied up when around the kitchen as they cause havoc spilling everything buit during the daty they go out with the guides and are loose to go where they want but allways return to the guides. these were great fun to play with. one felll asleep on me as i was pretending to pick fleas of him he soon was relaxed but then did get pissed of and make angry monkey noises when i tried to move hiom to get up. he also had great fun trying to look through my hair for fleas!!

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we then put on harnesses rather like rock climbing ones and headed for our first zip wire to our house. these were quite scary at first as you are flying above the ground at tree top leval and their not small trees not sure how high it was though. the house was built to the shape of the tree with open sides and three different floors. all the house look different obviously cause the shape of the trees. this one had a zip wire in and 2 out.

the are about 12 zipwires all together roud the jungle so you do have to do a bit of hiking and climbing as obviously they have to bee on differnt levals . some are over 100 m long these are wicked. spent m,ost of that day just getting used to the zipwires and the area that we were staying.

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next morning we were all up at 6.30 to watch the sun rise and listen out for the gibbon singing. this time of day they are the most active and if youhere them singing you can go out to try and spot them. we eventually heard them and then tried to track them down but unfortunatly couldnt see any. spent the rest of the day hiking and zipping around the jungle which was absolutly beautifull and full of different butterflies and birds. next morning we heard themm singing again but aftera lonmg hike againno luck in spotting them. was disapointing but i supose they cant reallly guaranty seeing them. again went for along hike then headed back later that day getting covered in dust along the road as we were sat in athe back of a truck.

crossed the border back to thailand that day with three girls that i had meet in the jungle and tried to get back to chang mai but we were too late so got to chang rai and stayed the night there. now back in chang mai for a short while (i hope so!!) trying to sort out my indian visa and flights.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 4th, 2006 at 4:07 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.