Oh My Monkey!

How do you describe soaring hundreds of feet in the air on a tiny wire?!  You are flying.  For the first few lines, the rush of the jump is so great, you can’t even process the beautiful scenery around you.  By the time you can grasp the beauty of the rainforest, you are ready to take on more daring stunts on the zip line – backwards, upside down, and zigzag.  The thrill of the zip line never gets old, and the adrenaline rush is addicting.

In the middle of the jungle - having a BLAST!

We made it to Chiang Mai after another 3 hour bus ride with lots of patience, international sign language, patience, car sickness, and patience.  While prices of food and accommodation paralleled the pattern of Chiang Rai with a large increase because of the shortage, much like Chiang Rai, the tourism industry was hit hard with the lack of tourists in the region, and most prices were beyond reasonable and a much better deal – even for poor “naksuksaa” students like ourselves. 

So we talked our way into four cheap all-inclusive tickets for the “Flight of the Gibbon” - a zip line near Chiang Mai with over 5 kms of zip line that has you gliding through different layers of rainforest canopy.  We chose this program because everyone said it was the highlight of their trip up North, they provided transportation and meals, and we all thought we could use a different kind of adventure from our hill tribe overnight!  There are over 45 different platforms, sky bridges and jumps to really make you feel like you are flying like a gibbon monkey from tree to tree.  After my first “flight” I certainly felt like a shrieking something!

On a Skybridge

The safety instructions were actually further terrifying.  They were less than a minute long, and situated next to a giant sign that showed a graphic of a person falling and said, “Always stay attached.”  Like I have any control over that!  The next thing I knew, I heard the sound of a click and I was thrown off my first zip line.  Ten seconds and ten screams later, I was soaring in a rainforest on an 800 meter zip line.

You would get to the top of the platform and when it was your turn, you would hear the fastener click…and then go.  The Sky Rangers were rather (hmmm what is the right word: thrill-seeking, adventurous, dangerous?!) and would often throw people off the platform or twist their wire so they zig zagged down the entire course…so you never knew what to expect.

We survived!

The second you heard that click – you had no idea exactly what would happen, except that you were going to be pushed off the platform.  Sometimes they half pushed you, just to get a scream or crazy reaction.  When I wouldn’t scream an expletive, I would typically scream something like “Ahhhhhhhh Oh my God!” to which our Sky Rangers would say, “No no no.  We say, ‘Oh my Buddha.’”  Which was then quickly modified to “Oh My Monkey.” 

I don’t think the four of us have ever eaten so much as the lunch we had after our zip line.  I’m not sure why we were so exhausted – we didn’t exert much physical energy – but perhaps all the screaming took it out of us!  That Thai meal was delicious and we absolutely got our money’s worth alone with the food.