When Fergal Quinntravels to Laos, a landlocked country between Thailand and China, he gets a chance to stay in a tree house, on the lookout for rare black-crested gibbons
IT'S 5.45AM AND WE AWAKE to the sound of gibbons hooting in the distance. There is barely time to wipe the sleep from my eyes before strapping on my harness and zipping along a cable from our tree house into a thick morning mist. A few minutes later a faint series of ripples in the jungle canopy, far below our small wooden viewing platform, signifies their arrival. Staring into the green lushness, I glimpse a shadow between the leaves, then leaping silhouettes passing in and out of view as a family of black-crested gibbons swings effortlessly from branch to branch past my perch.
It's the second morning of the Gibbon Experience, an ecotourism experiment in Bokeo Nature Reserve, 123,000 hectares of protected forest near the Thai and Chinese borders in northern Laos. I'm among one of the small groups of tourists who are brought deep into the jungle each day to experience the habitat of these rare apes, a species thought until a few years ago to be extinct.
The Gibbon Experience involves two nights sleeping in tree houses about 30m up in the trees, the only way in or out being via steel cables up to 250m long. These are used to zip along in a harness at breakneck speeds from platform to platform, over gorges and valleys high above the jungle.
Seeing gibbons, which are notoriously shy, is far from guaranteed. It's an easy sell all the same, satisfying the desires of the adrenalin junkie and wannabe conservationist while leaving the least possible trace on the animal's fragile habitat.
The zip lines are also an eminently practical way of traversing the thick jungle cover. A tough trek on day two, and numerous close encounters with the vile leeches that come out to feed in damp weather, confirms this. In fact, after a tremendous couple of days, zipping along seems as natural as riding a bike.
The contrast between Laos and modern, bustling Thailand was marked when we entered this landlocked country, via the border crossing at Huay Xai. The place hangs before you, poised between the onset of modernity and a present that seems, in the countryside at least, to have changed little in centuries. New roads in some areas have, as yet, little traffic on them, and signs warn the few motorists there are against using their horns too liberally. Despite the efforts of an increasing number of Chinese and Vietnamese logging companies, vast expanses of forest still blanket a good deal of the mountains in this large but sparsely populated country - it is three times the size of Ireland but has about the same number of inhabitants.
Lacking a coastline or the type of instantly recognisable image that can sell the place abroad on its own, Laos is focusing on the fast-growing ecotourism industry. With its mountainous scenery and numerous hill tribes, it is ideally positioned to benefit.
Luang Namtha is an excellent base from which to explore a selection of these attractions. A day's cycle around this small town, situated in a valley ringed by mountains, brings me to several settlements that seem untouched by the 20th century, never mind the 21st, as well as a stupa, or Buddhist shrine, set high on a hill with fine views over the countryside.
I sign up for a two-day trek with a small group, setting off from Muang Sing, a town in the hills near the Chinese border. The terrain can be treacherous, with one miserable section little more than an exercise in backside sledging. But a fine reward awaits as we emerge from the forest to take in an amazing view of mountains stretching off as far as the eye can see.
We camp for the night in an Akha hill-tribe village, where bare-breasted elderly women sit chewing areca, or betel, nuts outside bamboo huts, regarding the new arrivals with what seems like a mix of trepidation and defiance.
In the evening, as we sit around the campfire, our excellent guide tells us some blood-curdling tales of evil jungle spirits that seem all the more compelling with the thick blackness that surrounds us.
From here I head south to Luang Prabang, a temple-dotted city in the hills where the Nam Khan River joins the Mekong. Laos's cultural capital is blessed with an incredible heritage of both stunning Buddhist temples and pristine French colonial architecture, and it is gaining a reputation as a highlight of southeast Asia. Its beauty is undeniable, as is a tension between the huge number of tourists and the locals, whose discomfort at the pace of the change is palpable.
All the same, it makes for a lovely few days, with fabulous sunsets from Mount Phousi, while the early-morning sight of Buddhist monks streaming down to receive alms is worth checking out - if you can find a reasonably quiet viewing point.
A two-hour river cruise up the Mekong to Pak Ou, where hundreds of statues of Buddha stand in a naturally formed limestone cave, passes along a particularly picturesque section of the river, with cliffs and rice terraces on both banks.
In Vientiane, the capital, Laos National Museum - once home to the country's royal family, who died in captivity in a communist prison camp in the late 1970s - has stunning furnishings and a haunting air that belies an unpromising outside appearance.
If laid-back defines Laos for many visitors, then Vientiane, with its almost spookily deserted streets after 10pm, takes the biscuit. Despite the lack of stand-out attractions or architecture, the place has a charm that creeps up on you. On my last night there, in a shabby little bar overlooking the Mekong, a slight young waitress takes to the stage and, with a lack of reserve one rarely sees in southeast Asia, sings a beautiful, haunting melody.
It's a nice way to finish, even if I'm left with a nagging sense that in this seductive, fascinating country there is something profound that, however hard we try, we westerners will always miss entirely.