Ziplining in the jungle

Yesterday, one of the things I'd really been looking forward to about this trip finally happened: we did the Flight of the Gibbon, a zipline adventure in the jungle. I'd seen this on the Amazing Race (yes, yes, I watch reality TV sometimes) a few years ago and have wanted to do it ever since, so when we decided to go to Thailand, I of course convinced Mu that this would be a cool thing to do. He agreed, we booked, and finally, we went!

After picking up everyone, our van drove for about an hour on an increasingly windy and narrow road into the jungle. There were small villages along the way, but mostly, it was just forest, with a surprisingly well-paved road running through the middle. Upon our arrival, we were helped into safety harnesses and helmets by our very enthusiastic guide, Bert (and our less enthusiastic guide, Tom), driven a few minutes to the start of the route, and then there were the ziplines!

The process was pretty straight forward. At every station, one guide would go ahead to the next one to catch us, and one would stay with us to send us off. As we stood, we were always clipped in to a safety line attached to a tree, and the line only got unclipped by the guide in order to attach us to the zipline itself. Once he was satisfied, off you would go, flying to the next one! They were quite concerned that you not unclip yourself, as you can see from the warning on the right.

The first few ziplines were pretty short, and I was starting to get a little anxious that the whole thing would be less exciting than I had imagined, but then (after a hike that was all uphill for 10 minutes, and decidedly not "gentle" as described on the website), we got to the longest zipline, so long that we couldn't see the end of it, and the guides couldn't yell across anymore, using walkie talkies instead! We think it must've been about a kilometer long. Flying on it, surrounded by greenery, with a canyon and creek below, was exhilarating! After that, our whole group was pretty fired up.

There were two more rather long ziplines, though shorter than that first amazing one, and also two ziplines side by side for couples, and also one where you hung from your back and could fly, superman-style, into a net. We got a bunch of photos and a few videos. The ones I've posted here are from the same zipline ride -- one that I took of Mu coming in (sorry that it's sideways!), and one that Mu took as he was flying down!




At the end of it all, we got lowered by ropes to the ground, and you could choose to go "normally" (attached at the front), "superman-style" (attached at the back), or "upside down" (attached at the front, but lying on your back with your feet up, so you could see above and not below). I chose the latter, of course, while Mu decided to go right side up, leading to a funny picture of us. And then we were done. There was a delicious dinner with traditional musical accompaniment, and then we returned to Chiang Mai, exhausted and pleased.

Today, we have the morning in Chiang Mai to meander one last time, and then we get on an overnight train to Bangkok!