Huay Xay 21/5/16 - 23/5/16

First thing first: super awesome porridge! 

Sleeper bus was definitely a better option than the slow or fast boat and it was shiok as expect (by me at least, Pung and Phua expected less). Arrived in the morning, chilled at another cafe while waiting for the check in time. Breakfast was freaking awesome as usual, especially the pig blood porridge. 

This other thing is nice too! Something like Singapore's 肉丁 was added to make it nice 

Then after much hanging loose, it was finally time to check in and also, nap time! Checked in at Gibbon and back to hotel for more naps (for the two of them), then lunch and up the only attraction, a hill. 

Hill without much view, as usual. Really, there isn't much here, people usually use this as a base to cross the border; or, like us, down for the ONLY activity here...

And then nap again. And then dinner, where we met Alexon and Vanessa, a French-Canadian couple traveling the region while on their Master's summer break. Back to room, card games, FA finals, and I fell asleep before halftime...

Dinner view with Chiang Khon, Thailand just a stone's throw away, literally. 

Next day was Gibbon! After an hour's drive, we reach our starting point! Tan, Sitong (egg man, he hand carried a plastic bag of eggs up!), and Koumli were our guides with their minions, and we also met Americans Maggie and Anna, and Mexican Martin (who did an exchange in NUS just last semester and recognized our Halls of NUS shirt). 

Even had some local kids sending us off haha

And so begins our super awesome zip lining through the forest, and then the even more awesome treehouse in the middle of it! 

No photos of us doing the zipline in cos GoPro was lost and it was having occasional showers so phone wasn't that accessible; here's an arial view of our tree house looking into the "living room" from our "bedrooms"! 

Also, relying on the support of the tree, literally. LOL. This tree house can hold 16 but there was just 6 of us and 6 guides to stay at the living area! Very spacious

This is the view but the photo doesn't do it any justice as you can probably imagine. Also, toilet is just below so same view HAHA. Second best toilet view I've ever had, after the one in Norway. 

A night of exchanging traveling experiences, chat about army incidents, telling horror stories, and even views on the way of life, and then some poker games, ended off with a peaceful sleep in the sound of crickets' mating call and other random animal sounds in the forest... Next morning got woken up by the sun and we set off early in the morning at 6am after a night of stormy rain. Visited the largest tree in Laos and then back to the treehouse for breakfast. 

No photo of the largest tree in my phone but here is (sleepy?) Jingyi with his super big leaf for shelter; one of the guides even managed to zip with this leaf in one hand

More photo taking, and off we go, back to zip lining but this time out of the forest. Pluck up some courage and took a video of me zipping with my iPhone! One-handed zip at the fastest line but it was risk well-worth. After a series of trek-and-zip, we arrived at the end point... Probably the fondest memory of my Laos trip: Gibbon experience without the Gibbons but still one hell of an experience; I'll definitely miss it. 

Realize I'm missing many photos somehow but here's one of the nicer ones of us! Will go on to meet Martin one last time in Singapore before he return to Mexico, and while we continued our SEA trip, the three others actually travelled together for quite a bit as well! Lovely people, till we meet again!