Ever Had Fresh, Right Off the Tree That Almost Fell On You, Papaya?

No?! Well, it can't be beat.
I'm sure the big question, esp. after I posted the ziplining videos on FB, is how was the Gibbon Experience? Well, for most of the men out there, it was like living out a childhood fantasy. I lived in an awesome treehouse in the jungle, hiking and zipping around the jungle at my leisure. For the women, I guess it's the equivalent for you would be if I got to get married and cook and clean for 2 nights. Isn't that what you fantasised about?

Here's what went down. They go through some safety video, you buy a pair of "gloves" (I didn't check mine and ended up with two right handed gloves, not that you need them anyway cause the brakes were built into the sliding device) and socks that go about knee length. I should have bought some golf like shoes that had nubs on them, but I was afraid with all the hiking that I'd get blisters (and I would have - some girls bought them and had blisters). The trade off was blisters vs no traction and sliding around all over the place in the slick that comprised 80% of the trails. The only shoe I had was my toe shoes and they are meant for everything except mud, although I think they may make some specifically for backpacking now.
I joined a group of 9 others - three couples, two friends, and one other dude who was traveling solo. Lets see, of the couples we had Irish, Antone and Anne, German, Peter and Anne, Dutch, Tuon and I never actually caught his girlfriend's name nor the two Danish girl's names, and a South African, Greg. The drive is about 3 hours, but during the rainy season, and this last couple weeks has been really bad, once the road turns to dirt, you usually end up walking much of the road to the village. This was true for us. We stopped after 15 min. in and had to carry our bags and food (about 20 kilos) up and down the muddy ass road 30 mins till we got to another car setup on a more stable portion of the road. It definitely gave you appreciation for the villigers that do that on a regular basis. After riding in that truck for 30 min, we stopped again and had to walk 40 min to the village. While in the car, we passed gringos walking out of the village who looked absolutely miserable (that wasn't foreboding at all). When I say village, I don't mean where we stayed. What I mean is where we eat lunch. From there, you walk a narrow super slippery trail an hour to a hut in the jungle where you'll pick up your equipment and guides. How much more walking depends on which treehouse you're staying in. If the group is over six they split them into two treehouses. Mine was the furthest away, so two more hours, luckily part of it required zipping. We did all the safety briefing this day.
On the way, we heard a bunch of noise in the tree tops. Some of the group got a better view, I only got a millisecond view of the gibbons, and some behind me got nada. How this whole thing got started was because of these gibbons (hence the name). These gibbons were believed to gone extinct due to human encroachment and habitat destruction. They were "re-descovered" about 10 or 15 years ago. Originally, this company was set up to save these guys. Eventually, they convinced the government to make it a national park. This doesn't mean as much as it does in a lot of places, so the company tried purchasing land and employing people to help protect the park. This cost money, and the donations weren't cutting it. To pay for all this, they set up the "experience". The experience has about 25 ziplines, hours of trails, "kitchens", and 7 treehouses set up around the jungle. They employ the locals to help run, maintain, and protect. It is still considered lucky to even hear the gibbons, let alone see them. There are other animals like lizards, bugs, monkeys, snakes, and cats. I only saw the brief glimpse of the gibbons (and heard them "sing" on the last day) and some bugs and lizards.
By the time we got to our treehouse it was time for dinner and we were pretty beat. The guides zip in the food from the kitchen nearby. It is remarkably good food considering. After dinner we all took turns showering. That's right, it had a shower and toilet, however, the plumbing came in (and was drinkable at least from the sink), but there was none out. Just holes. I felt conficted about how "green" it was to have soapy water and human waste just fall to the jungle floor. It's only 8 people at most per day, but it's still going to run off into the nearby creeks. There are inexpensive alternatives. Anyway, our guides Valo and Bachaou (spellings?) joined us for dessert and tea. It started raining pretty hard so they took off for the night and we stayed up talking till about 9:30.
The next day, they woke us at 7 for breakfast (also, pretty good considering). We had a big day ahead so we were out the door, so to speak, before 9. We zipped around and the guides gave us some minor critiques on safety and style. Also, we visited some of the other treehousestreehouse for lunch, the sun came out and pretty much stayed sunny the rest of our trip. The sun, of course, being crazy hot and humid, but luckily most of the trails were shaded.
After lunch, we were left to our own devices. The guides had decided we were safe enough to zip ourselves. The entire group decided to nap, but it is extremely difficult for me to do nap. Plus, I was in the jungle surrounded by ziplines... So, I decided to zip by myself, which might be ironically safer. I've noticed the same thing with skiing. When you are on your own (or maybe just me), esp. in a potentially dangerous situation, I excerise more caution. Way more. After zipping out the treehouse, I was walking by the kitchen. Not 5 seconds after walking under a tree next to the kitchen, it fell across the path. I of course muttered something like, "holy shit", which the guides later ribbed me about. It fell across their make shift clothes lines too, so I was helping their family pick up some of the clothes and noticed that the tree was a papaya tree. There was one ripe one. The guides and I split it, and I have to say it was the best papaya I've ever had. It tasted slightly sweeter than a normal papaya. I assume that was the sweetness of escaping death. After sharing the papaya, I talked with the guides a bit about their lives. They were H'mong and lived in the village we stopped at. They earn $3 a day, plus whatever tips they get and free food. They work everyday and don't get vacation unless there's an emergency. Despite all that, they couldn't complain. Partly, because Laos people are so easy going and partly cause they are living in the jungle and zip around all day, which was, in their opinion, better than a rice patty. Valo, was 24 and had 2 kids. I don't know how old Bachaou was, but he had 5 kids. I didn't get too much else out of them and could tell they wanted to go back to napping, so I bailed. After zipping about for an hour, I came back to the treehouse to the rest of the group waking up. We all zipped for another couple hours.
After dinner, we asked our guides if we could night zip. They were understandably reluctant at first. Truthfully, Antoine, Greg, and I were going to do it even had they said no. But they finally agreed and at about 8PM, it was sufficiently dark enough. It was just the three of us, plus our guides for the first line. I'd say that night zipping is up there with one of the coolest things I've ever done. We had flashlights, but we tried to only use them when we were approaching the brake zone. I say tried, but your depth perception and timing is all screwed up in the dark, so we'd turn them on after only being on the zip 1/3 through, thinking it was near the end. Our guides walked us to the zip back into our treehouse and kept throwing shit into the jungle and gasping. The first couple times scared the shit out of the three of us. Oh, they had a good little giggle.
The next day we spent the morning zipping an area we hadn't hit the day before that had an amazing view of the national park. Then, we headed down to the village to rejoin the part of the group they put in the other treehouse, whom, by the way, had been waiting there about two hours. Felt only a slight pinge of guilt that passed when they told us that they seen the gibbons a couple times near their treehouse. A couple of them had over 200 hundred mozzie bites, but I took the cake on leeches having had 12 bites. If you're curious, leeches look like inch worms, at least till they suck some blood and swell up. You don't feel them bite because they have something like Novocaine, and when you pull them off the bite bleeds like crazy cause they have some sort of blood thinner they inject. They don't carry any diseases to worry about, they are just a nusense cause of the bleeding. Oh, and I tweaked my knee from all the sliding around on the trail, but it seems to be back to it's previous condition now.
Also, we got lucky. The sun had dried the road enough that we didn't have to walk the road out like the group we saw when we came in! All in all, it was one bad ass experience.

I haven't done too much since returning to Thailand. I find that the north an middle of the country are not that exciting. I think the real gem to Thailand is the south. What have I done since returning? I met up with a friend for the day to go rent motos, get a little lost, see a waterfall where the fish nibbled at my feet, go to the top of the mountain adjacent to Chang Mai, get poured on, and also see the night market. Not a huge fan of the markets in the world. They are all pretty much the same. Considering I'm not a shopper unless I have something I need to buy, wandering about looking at the same shit they sell almost everywhere doesn't really appeal to me. Other than that, I thought I'd try my hand at seeing a movie, but the theater, which was a fair walk, was only showing Transformers 3 on all seven screens. I couldn't bear to torture myself with Micheal Bay, so I walked back. Today, I went to a temple that I took some pictures at the day before. I returned because they have a place where the monks who are studying English can practice with you as well as you can learn stuff from them.
I sat down with one whose name is pronounced Tone. Funny dude. Although, their jokes may seem a little racy in our culture; as in later a Chinese dude sat down and Tone made a joke about how he knew he was Chinese based on his facial features. I really learned a lot from Tone, for example: females can be monks, but they have two ceremonies that they must follow to do so and one is now gone (and that is why there aren't any female monks in Thai); every male in Thailand at one time is sent by their parents to monk school; they must live at the temple; there are 3 principles - avoid doing bad, try to do good, and purify your mind; as novice monks they have ten rules they must follow - don't kill, can't lie, can't hurt (except in defense), no sex, can't touch money, can only eat before noon, no alcohol or drugs, and some others he didn't talk about; the first four are the main rules and if you break them while a monk you are expelled forever from the practice; however, if you don't break those four rules you can quit being a monk at any time, maintain a normal life, and return at any time later in life even if you broke those rules while on "sabbatical"; at the age of 20, or older, they can decide to be practicing monks, at which point they have to follow 210 rules, some as strange as how to pee (not allowed to stand and pee); everything is meditation not just sitting in silence - the way you move, talk, breathe, act, sleep, all is meditation; Thailand military service is lottery based and compulsory. A monk must quit for service, but can return afterward; the temples and monk life are 100% based on donations; they believe in heaven and hell, but they are temporary because they believe in reincarnation. Your reincarnated form depends on your actions, like a karmic thermometer; certain things like tattoos, smoking, cell phones are acceptable based on purpose - if it's for defense (tobacco was considered a defense against leeches) or necessity (like for your family to call for emergencies), it is ok; the Thai monks can eat meat. They can't kill it, they can't have it killed for them, if they are told it was killed or will be killed for the them, they can't eat it. Basically, if they think that the animal was killed for the purpose of giving to the monk, they can't eat it. When can they eat it? When they go out for their food and some vendor lops some meat in their bowl that they intended for all people and not just the monk; they can't eat certain sacred animals (dog is included); According to Tone, Buddha was a prince in India. He saw three truths - we all get sick, we all age and become weak, and we all die. An angel told him of a way out and that was to be a monk. So, he started the what would later be considered the monk way of life. However, he first went out into the forest and fasted almost to death. Then, he realised the way was through purity of ones self (particularly the mind) and he found enlightenment;
Tone became a monk student at the age of 12. He found he loved the simplicity of monk life so much that when he turned 20 (he's 21) he decided to become a practicing monk. He said that he sees his family about twice a year for a week each. He can't stay with them during his visit and must return to a neighborhood temple. That's about all I got, but it was all fascinating. He, as well as the Chinese dude (whose name was similar to Merlow) did ask about the US and personal inquiries. I learned that China's one child rule doesn't apply to every ethnic group.
Today has been quite interesting with people. At lunch I met a guy name Ted Coombs who is here for dental work cause it's about a third the cost and considered the best in the world. He was here with his deaf "partner", Tice. I sat at a table near them and Ted struck up a conversation, asking me about where I was from and what I was up to out here. Turns out he was a pretty interesting character. He roller skated across America to promote a movie in the 70's. I can't remember the name of it, but it had John Ritter in it and was about what America would be like in 1994. He made the guiness book of world records by doing it. Now he lives in Hawaii with his partner. He runs a website, futuristyx.com in which he helps people decide about their future plans. I guess, it's mostly for investing, but he also described it as people will come to him and tell him they want to be a car mechanic. Having spent all his free time looking at what he called scenario something or other in as many fields as possible, he'd say something like, "robotics need mechanics. That's a field that will be around awhile and trends are looking bad for mechanics in 15 to 20 years". I'm paraphrasing. Personally, I didn't really know how to respond because my inner skeptic was giggling when he told me he was a futurist. Still, I feel I should at least check out his website before knocking him, esp. considering if you told me about Reiki and whatnot a year ago, my inner skeptic would have giggled at that too.

I don't have many more plans for Thailand. I figure I'll attend a monk prayer service, go to the tiger temple, and maybe just try to keep out of the heat. So, for those of you who keep pestering me with my plans *cough - mom*, I'll probably leave Chang Mai on the 12th, catch a connecting bus from Bangkok to whatever town it is that the tiger temple is at and stay there till the 17th. At which point I'll return to Bangkok, stay a night and I leave for Turkey on the 18th.
That's all I got folks. Expect to see a few soap box posts coming out because vegetarianisms been up in my grill, and the book I'm reading has inspired a couple things.