Flight of the Gibbon

Today we headed off on another day trip out of Chang Mai. Heading up into the surrounding mountains outside the city, we were going on a zip-lining adventure. Driving for about an hour deep into the rain forest of northern Thailand, you begin to come across different hill tribes from time to time. The road winded up and around and through the forests and we enjoyed breathtaking views of the mountains.

We continued until we came across a small group of wood huts, some carved into the hillside, some standing out as though they were tree houses. In this little village, we had reached our destination of “Flight of the Gibbon.” Gibbon being a monkey that can go miles and miles without ever having to touch the ground. This is a high adventure ropes course and zip lining experience. We checked in and again, as always, were greeted by all the villagers and guides. They always have the kindest remarks for you and are as interested to here your story as you are their’s.
We got harnessed up and headed right out to the course. The course consisted of 18 launch ramps, 11 zip lines, 3 vertical lines, and 2 wood bridges. It was unbelievable. Here you are in the middle of the Thailand rain forest, just trying to take in the view of everything around you.
And yet you are doing a high ropes course almost 300 feet in the air. The distance between trees ranged from 100 to 500 feet. And at some points you are scared shitless. I loved every second of it, it was so nice to take in nature in such a great way.
The guides on the trip were great as well. Loong and Noon were very professional and extremely safety-conscious, but you knew that they wanted to have fun. During some parts of the zip-lining you are suppose to use a “Y” shaped stick as a break, but they allowed us to use it sometimes just to suspend ourselves over the valley 200 ft below. They were defiantly a big reason that made this experience so awesome.

This weird ladder here is what local Thai folk place in the tree, to climb up it.

We finished up our zip-line experience and headed back to the village to be taken to the second part of our day. A huge waterfall!!!
We must have walked up the side of the waterfall for a half hour spanning almost 500 feet, and the waterfall just didn’t stop. It was simply stunning and well worth the hike.
To conclude the day we went back to the village were some of the local women had prepared us lunch. For lunch we were treated to red panang curry, rice, stir-fired vegetables, and some watermelon and banana’s for dessert. And as I have said about every single meal here in Thailand. So delicious, it makes my mouth water just thinking about it.
As a side note, the banana’s we were served for lunch, were lady finger banana’s, much narrower than you find in the states and so filling with so much flavor. You take a bite of your banana and it is so rich and tastes like it is meat .
So that was our day, we headed back down the long and winding road until we got back into the city of Chang Mai.