We crossed over the Friendship Bridge into Laos at Huay Xai and the kids had to get their heads around a new language and currency. Lao Kip is 6000 to the Australian dollar. Our ride to the boarder on the public bus was another first for the kids. It was a pimped up old bus with wooden floors and plenty of bling. The kids were not so sure about the safety standards when the driver left the doors open as a form of air conditioning.

It is still amazingly hot with temperatures over 40 most days. The kids have embraced the local foods and are now happily having noodles and rice for every meal and eating in some interesting places. We felt very proud the other day when Dibs had the option of toast, egg and sausages and afterwards proclaimed that he now ‘gets’ the noodles for breakfast. I must say – I may have told them on one occasion that the dark brown object in their breakfast rice soup was mushroom not liver!!! Their favourite new sensation is the lazy Suzan – they cant believe we don’t have one at home.

Our purpose of travelling to Huay Xai was to do the Gibbon Experience. It was something I agonised over for many months back home, wonder if it was ‘responsible’ to take the kids zip lining in a developing country. I am so glad I did. It is advertised as making childhood fantasies come true and it most certainly does that. Essentially we were taken by Tuk Tuk into a national park reserve. This took over an hour in the back of a ute on very bumpy roads and in 41 degree heat. We then met our guides, put on our harnesses. We then had to walk 2 hours up hill (still 41 degrees) this was a serious challenge that had Mima questioning our parenting choices!

We finally got to the first zip line and the kids were beside themselves with excitement. There was no ‘gently introducing the zip lining’ the first one was over 500 meters and 100meters off the ground. Chloe was jumping out of her skin to go first and my heart was in my mouth. She thankfully had to go with one of the guides as she is not heavy enough to guarantee she would make it all the way across. The screams of delight as she took off and disappeared into the distance (you could not see the end of the zip line it was so far away.) The other two followed suit – except on their own. I must say I never quite loss that little skip of the heart every time they took off – which was literally 100s of times.

Our Guide X-Man took some great footage of her as he expertly held his phone while zip lining!

Click here to see Chloe’s flight through the jungle

Officially we had 11 zip lines on the first day with the final one being to our tree house accommodation. This was truely stuff that dreams are made of.

We arrived at the treehouse at about 3.30 and were treated to afternoon tea while taking in the amazing view of the jungle. Much to the kids delight – especially Dibs the kids were allowed to spend the afternoon zip lining to and from the tree house their hearts content. For Dibs that for 3 hours straight!! Adults relaxed, read books and took in the view. At sunset I donned my harness and took the above footage. I stopped halfway to take a photo and monkey climbed my way back to the tree house – but it was worth it, i think this photo will hold a special place in my heart.

Dinner was brought to us by one of the cooks, she ziplined in with it on her back!! It was the most beautiful selection of food and we were sharing our tree house with two Swiss and two Dutch travellers. It was still over 40 degrees but the bathroom (on the lower level with complete privacy – except for jungle animals!) had an wonderful cold shower with the water dropping away below you to the Jungle floor 40 meters below.

It was terribly hard to get to sleep because of the heat – dibs taught the boys how to play Exploding Kittens, which wasn’t easy when the two Lao Guides did not speak much English.

The guides had been awesome and had run us through the safety procedure should we need to evacuate, but we did not think we would need to – boy was I wrong. At about 1am the build up of heat and humidity during the day was released in a suggest storm with almighty wind gusts, thunder and lightening. We were instructed by our guides to get into our harnesses and prepare to evacuate. Trying to focus when Being woken suddenly is not easy, and the stakes were pretty high when trying to ensure the kids and my harnesses were all on safely. The kids went first – onto the zip line – into the dark, wind and rain. When it was my turn my heart was again in my mouth as a took a step off into the darkens – there is something about zipping along a wire cable with lightening all around you in the middle of a Laos Jungle that makes you feel slightly vulnerable! We evacuated to the cooks hut and waited out the storm which raged for a good 20min then disappeared as quickly as it started. Taking with it most of the heat and dropping the temperature to a lovely 20 degrees (ish). Back to the tree house we went, off to sleep and woken in the morning to a myriad of jungle noises.

https://soundcloud.com/fionaf1976/morning-jungle-sounds

The morning brought us a pre-breakfast zipline excursion, another delicious meal and then off for 8 more zip lines, a pretty hot hike and bumpy car ride back out of the jungle. The beers tasted pretty good that night and the air conditioning was a treat.

Today we have set off again, this time on a slow long boat up the Mekong to Luang Prabang. It is a long two day trip (about 7 hours each day) and I sit writing this in a little town called PakBeng, our accommodation is right on the river with beautiful views. I’m sitting on the deck and again a storm has blown in and thunder and lightening are lighting up the hillsides as rain pounds the tin roof above me. This place (two rooms) is costing us a total of $30 for the night!!