Flight of the Gibbon - ziplining in the Jungle

Today another great adventure awaits me - ziplining in the jungle! 

I wake up early and I am very excited when the minibus picks me up at 8 am. I am the first one to be picked up and after me, a young English couple and two English girls, together with a young woman from Bavaria, get on the bus. Later on, we also pick up a French couple who is staying in a remote residence. 

The young woman from Germany is a teacher who took a sabbatical and is traveling the world for 13 months. We have so much to talk about and time flies. At about 9:30, we reach the village of Mae Kampong, where our adventure starts. Firstly, we get safety instructions and then we put on our helmets and other equipment. Together with 2 guides, we get on a little car and drive for about 10 more minutes. Then we walk for another 10 minutes and - voià - we are at the first platform. In the next few hours, we visit more than 40 platforms, go on 14 ziplines, treehouses, skybridges, and cables - all together more than 5 km. We are enjoying one of the world´s longest single ziplines.

I am very excited and nervous before I get on my first zipline. I have never done anything like this before, and if it were not for the group I was in, I think I would have backed out at the last moment. I really feel so scared, but I don’t want to be a coward, so I gather enough courage and jump! And it is wonderful!! Just the first moment feels a little weird, but then I start enjoying flying like a bird above the rainforest! And the first zipline is the longest one, over 800 meters! I feel quite safe, as we have 2 guides for our group, one always at the beginning and the other at the end of the group. They always meet us when we reach the next platform and help us to stop safely.

During the next few hours, we experience very versatile ziplines: on some, we go as a pair, on one we have to jump backwards (which is also quite challenging). On one, we do Superman: that means we are fixed on our back and we kind of skydive into the air, we jump like doing a header in the water with our head first right into nothing and then fly like an eagle to the next platform. Again, very challenging, but I overcome all my fears and I do it! I jump to the front, jump to the back like a monkey, climb upwards on a net like a spider, and fly like an eagle in the sky. Several times we also have to cross skybridges, and twice they do abseiling with us. However, it is not actually abseiling, but rather dropping down that they do with us. The last station is also an abseiling of 14 meters and then we did it!!! I am so happy and so proud of myself that I didn’t back out but overcame my fears and I really enjoyed it.

Afterwards, we drive back to the office and enjoy a delicious Thai lunch at a nearby restaurant. Then we visit a nearby waterfall where we walk around for half an hour before they take us home. The rest of the day I relax a little while at the pool before I explore the area around Tapae Gate with its beautiful temples, restaurants, and bars. Then I go to the famous Night Market of Chiang Mai. When I come back to my hostel it is time to pack because tomorrow my North Thailand adventure is over and I will be heading south to the islands.