Ziplining with gibbons

Beth and I like to zip line when we are on vacation.  We've zipped in South Africa, Alaska, Costa Rica, Whistler (Canada), Lake Geneva, and now Thailand.  We chose a company called Flight of the Gibbons, but no way did I think we'd actually be zip lining with gibbons around us.  Gibbons are primates, related to the monkey (http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/gibbon/), for those not up on their primate distinctions -  like me before this trip.

Just before the longest zip of the day, our guide brought us over to see two gibbons playing in the nearby trees.  They are very graceful as they swing from branch to branch, or run along the limbs.  Incredible to watch.  We then headed back to our zip platform to get ready for the 730 meter zip across the jungle.  As the people in front of us took off, we saw the gibbons make their way over towards our zip line area. By the time I got hooked up, the baby gibbon was hanging out on a tree directly below the zip line.  As I flew over him, he gave me a look as if to say "crazy human."  It was perhaps my favorite zip experience ever.

The entire zip line course was really fun.  Even the shorter lines our guides would try to make more exciting by swinging or bouncing the line.  One of the lines was a "superman" line, where you get hooked up on your back instead of your front, so you fly face down like superman.  That jump off that platform looking straight down was terrifying.  In fact, most of us (raises hand) had to be pushed off. it's just not natural to jump face first off a platform high above the trees. Once you got zipping though, it was fine. This course also featured a few suspension bridges (Beth's favorites), two side-by-side lines where Beth and I went together, and two rappels where we zipped straight down.  Eeks!  Those ended up being a lot less scary than they initially seemed because our guides lowered us down in a pretty controlled manner.

Everyone in our group (other Americans, Brits and Chinese) had a great time, with the possible exception of the Chinese mom.  At one point I thought she was going to kill our guide with her laser eyes as we had to walk from one platform to another up a muddy, steep path.  She didn't speak any English, but trust us that she didn't need to in order to get her feelings across.  By the end though she was smiling as she finished up her zips, so hopefully she enjoyed at least some of the trip (she was the only one in our group who didn't do the superman; she got to use the regular zip parallel to it).

All in all, Beth and I weren't too disappointed that the Elephant Nature Park we wanted to visit was sold out, so we got to spend the day ziplining instead.  The only bad part about the day was the trip to/from the course, which involved driving on very winding mountain roads. Since I'm prone to car sickness, that was not my favorite part of the day :/

We are off to Ko Samui next, where hopefully my phone will connect to wifi again so I can get some pics up on these last few posts.

Update: yay for wifi!  Pics posted!