The Promise: Adrenaline, Ziplines and Wildlife – Oh my!
In October 2025, we treated ourselves to The Gibbon Experience, a wild animal / ziplining adventure combo in northwestern Laos.
While the name suggests gliding through treetops and observing gibbons closeup in their natural habitat, it’s not quite like that.
[Note: we’re fairly budget-conscious, so we chose the Group Classic Tour, the least expensive option; we ended up with something of a hybrid so our experience may not match yours exactly]
Read on to learn what it IS like, and whether it’s worth your time, travel and money!
What IS the Gibbon Experience? And what it isn’t.
The Gibbon Experience bills itself as something of a cross between an environmental and economic stewardship project, creating both jobs/careers for local residents and offering responsible access to wildlife.
All while having a ton of fun – though they’re careful not to compare themselves to thrill parks.
What to Expect / Choices:
The Gibbon Experience offers a few activity choices, ranging from a Honeymoon to Classic to Giant tour. We can’t speak about your honeymoon needs, but they make it pretty clear that if actually seeing Gibbons is a priority, you should choose the Classic tour.
The Giant might get you more varied ziplining, but it apparently takes you into parts of the forest (jungle?) that are too far from the gibbons’ hangouts.
How to get to The Gibbon Experience – the tricky part
The Gibbon Experience *offices* are in the town of Houaxay, Laos, (also sometimes spelled Huay Xay, or Huaysai) which is something of a transit hub for tourists coming in by bus from Chiang Mai Thailand, heading upriver by slow boat to Luang Prabang.
TGE’s offices are right on the small main strip and easy to find.
If you’re coming from Thailand, plan on a full travel day with border crossings/immigration to deal with, and to arrive at least the day prior to your experience. Other blogs cover this in detail, as does TGE’s site. Aside: see our posts on Chiang Rai / Chiang Mai, you may want to plan to come from there.
In our case, we flew into Bokeo International Airport from Vientiane, (where we spent 4 days) which ran about $140pp, and then required a taxi from the airport into town. These flights are tricky, because the airport code doesn’t always show up, depending on where you search. Flights are also seasonal, we think.
We found no way to make arrangements in advance; you purchase taxi tickets at the exit, and hope you’ll be able to get a “share taxi” (minivan), which at the time of our visit cost 1.2 million kip. There were no other people going our way however, so we paid 900k kip ($43) for a 4-door sedan. The ride takes a little over 1 hour.
Huay Xay has restaurants and lodgings at a variety of levels. Our advice? Spend a *couple* extra bucks for a decent room, especially on your return. Ours – which we’re not recommending – had no A/C, was threadbare, and ran around $13/night. Wish we’d have spent more like $18. The food was decent though.
Group Adventure – Who’s your buddy !?
We were lucky, and had an amazing group. Mostly young women from the Netherlands, all smiles and high energy – there was immediate camaraderie, laughter, and lots of offers to video each other etc. Two were “assigned” to the Honeymoon Treehouse (so as not to be vacant) and offered to swap with us, as (1). I was the only male, so it’s more comfortable for everyone, and (2), they had other Dutch compatriots to hang with. Win-Win!
IF you can arrange to do this trip with folks you already know – from home or met in your travels – your experience will be that much better.
Equipment & Safety
What do we know? It was our first time ziplining!
Seriously, the harnesses seemed to be in good condition – no frayed webbing etc., and our carabiner clips were freshly lubricated.
We were provided with both a helmet – to protect your head in event of contact with cable – and knit gloves with rubber grip buttons to protect our hands from both the cable and the oil on the clips.
The vans & trucks we rode to/from the sites seemed to be in good mechanical condition as well.
You’ll get a couple safety briefings, and equipment reviews, plus a couple 10-15 minute lessons before your first “flight” – which is not far off the ground. After that, though… once you’re comfortable, you’ll be many dozens of feet / meters up in the tree canopy on all zips.
What to BRING for The Gibbon Experience
In addition to the usual (medications, clean undies & socks etc.) you’ll want to bring:
- >Serious, high-DEET mosquito repellent. Seriously.
- >Headlamp (flashlight is OK, but headlamp is better – and “mandatory”)
- >Rain gear
- >Cables & charger/Battery for your phone (there are a couple slow-charge solar USB ports in the treehouses, but…),
- >Go-Pro. DJI Osmo, or other sports camera
- [Several in our group used their cellphones with lanyards to capture their zips; it’s up to 150 meters to the forest floor from the cable, don’t take anything you can’t afford to lose.]
- >Extra Clothes – You’ll have time to shower (cold) before or after dinner, so sleepwear is a nice luxury, but remember, you’ll want to keep your daypack under 5kg. And you’ll be hiking with it a LOT, so lighter is better. Everything should be wicking and layerable. You’ll likely want 2 pair of socks; the trails can be very muddy.
- >Deck of cards or e-book? You’ll probably be back to the treehouse around 5-530pm, in time for sunset; showers & dinner only take up so much of the evening…
- >Snacks (granola bars, trekking mix…): Like we said, meals were tasty & sufficient+, but you DO do quite a bit of climbing on steep paths during your ziplining loops, and you may want a little energy boost. We did munch a couple rehydration/sports candies as you can work up quite a sweat in the humid jungle!
- >Flipflops or some other “indoor” shoe. Your trail shoes, even in dry season, will likely be muddy, and it’s the custom in Laos to change into slides, flip flops or some other indoor-only shoe. In fact, your guides will insist on removing shoes/boots when entering treehouse.
- >Epipen if you’re allergic to bee/wasp etc. stings. There are some HUGE, frightening-looking stinging insects in that jungle; be prepared.
The Gibbon Experience – Practical info
The Gibbon Experience departs daily with groups of 8 people max. Each departure is “joining” and mixed-gender unless you’ve fully booked the whole party.
The Experience before the Experience
The morning your adventure starts, you arrive at The Gibbon Experience office, have a cuppa, and watch a orientation & safety video (hah). You’ll then pile into a minivan for your hour+ long ride to the start of your… hike.
Yep, you hike across fields, streams and uphill into the jungle before even spotting a zipline. The length of this hike will depend on how hard it’s rained recently; in our case, the 2nd set of roads were super rutted & muddy and we had to go a bit further than usual to catch our 4×4 ride to the lunch stop.
Lunch is in a small village, in a BIG tent and was more than satisfying. From here, you’ll walk the rest of the way. (Note, on our way down, we were able to ride from lunch village to the usual pickup/dropoff spot, which is good, because my Mt. Fuji knee injury was really killing me).
What you’ll eat and drink during your Gibbon Experience
The food at lunch village and in the treehouse was both plentiful and generally really tasty.
The one exception being, oddly, rice. Surprisingly, it was either over- or -undercooked and not really desirable for any of the meals. Everything else had a good level of flavor and portions were good to ridiculous. Our solo dinner and breakfast in the Honeymoon treehouse were both waayyyy too much food.
No beer in the treehouses but we were provided with some (presumably homemade) “whisky” which we enjoyed after dinners. You’ll also have plenty of fresh drinkable water.
Where you’ll sleep: in Treehouses!
TGE doesn’t call it glamping, and so we won’t either, but we felt it was a great experience to stay in the treehouse(s); we’re glad to have done it here rather than in Bardiya or Chitwan National Parks in Nepal, which we’d considered.
That said, there are significant differences to each one. Each will have a different magnificent view, sunrise or sunset (none have both that we know of), and a floorplan dictated by the branches of the 100-400 year old tree you’ll be living in for a few days.
The two Honeymoon Treehouses we visited are actually pretty small, and we feel we had the better of the two given its layout and features. We really enjoyed our “bar” overlooking the eastern horizon. We’d love to tell you about the sunrise, but it was completely socked in by fog our first morning, and on the 2nd, we were elsewhere, spotting gibbons.
Our treehouse also had a synthetic tarpaulin roof (rubber?) which kept us dry (from the top at least) during the torrential rain we had the first night. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced a harder, heavier rainstorm. I swear we heard Noah doing rollcall as he loaded the ark.
The rest of our group were in Treehouse #4, which had a thatch roof – and some leaks. It also had a smaller kitchen, smaller bath/shower room (and for 6-8 people!!) and more steps. It did have a lovely western/sunset view.
The Gibbon Experience Guides
This is honestly one area where I felt The Gibbon Experience fell a bit short. While the guides provided seemed friendly enough, command of English as a whole was lacking.
Additionally, and more importantly, there were numerous times when we were off doing ziplining “loops” with no supervision- no one at either launch or landing to check gear or advise whether one was coming in too fast and needed to brake or not.
Often the guides were seen at other platforms, looking at their phones.
While ziplining does get to be a *bit* of a habit, and isn’t terribly complicated, it is a VERY long way down from most lines and if there IS an equipment problem, it’s not going to end well.
Choose a buddy and keep an eye on each other.
Gibbons – DID we see them!?
Gibbons are creatures of habit, and while TGE doesn’t *guarantee* a sighting (no ethical safari / animal experience should ever guarantee sightings) the guides know the gibbons’ routine and where you’re most likely to spot them, and when.
We learned late in the Gibbon Experience that in this particular area of the forest, as of October 2025, there are only 4 gibbons: 2 females and their 2 offspring. Apparently the males both died off recently. Sad on its own, and not what we wanted to hear, when we originally envisioned ourselves zooming through treetops while they happily munched leaves a few feet away.
In our case, a little before full sunrise (before breakfast, even) we headed to a platform we were already well acquainted with zipping to/from. We spent probably an hour there, waiting, listening, and eventually watching as they swung through the bamboo and trees … then it was our turn. So, (Spoiler Alert): YEP! We saw gibbons!
Our Overall Gibbon Experience
Really great.
I mean, this was both exhausting and immensely entertaining. We’re not really adrenaline junkies, but even after more than 20 launches, each zip had something to offer due to changing weather, light – and energy level. I found I did get tired around 4pm. Plus, I never quite got over the trepidation of stepping off those 100+ foot high platforms, and … trusting.
We were fortunate to hear gibbons and see them on our final morning – and we’ll probably never forget their calls… super loud, super unique and honestly pretty crazyscary sounding at first.
You may get lucky and also hear the gibbons from your treehouse.
If you’ve been considering jungle hikes, or ziplining, or wild animal adventure travel, The Gibbon Experience checks all those boxes!
It’s a fun adrenaline and joy boost, and for us, two new experiences rolled into one.
Is it worth the cost?
For us, that boost offset the relatively steep cost- around $440 per person at time of writing (price varies seasonally AND by how full they are).
But if you add up the treehouse stay we didn’t do in Nepal, the ziplining we didn’t do in Costa Rica and any daytrip to see wild animals pretty much anywhere, it comes in as a pretty solid value.
That is… if you’re under 65 years old and weigh less than 245lbs, without mobility issues. At time of writing, The Gibbon Experience did not accept bookings from people exceeding either number, and there is nothing “accessible” about this experience.
If you’ve read everything above, and decided you want to try it.. check out their site; the only way to book is direct, and they sell out weeks to months in advance.
Last Updated 1/24/2026 – original post