Flying High on the 4th of July

Since we weren’t home to celebrate America’s birthday, we wanted to do something memorable to take our minds off of the fireworks, barbecues and beach parties we were missing back in the USA. We figured, what better way to celebrate the anniversary of America’s independence than zipping through a forest with Gibbons cheering us on?!

So this year, to celebrate the 4th of July we booked a ziplining adventure through the Thai Rainforest with Flight of The Gibbon.

Our day started bright and early when the van picked us up from our hotel at 6:30 in the morning. Normally, we’d have a hard time getting out of bed so early, but the thought of zipping across 5km of rainforest, including Asia’s longest zipline (it’s roughly 800 meters!), made waking up at 5:30am fairly easy. When the van arrived we met the rest of our group consisting of 6 other people, two of which were from New York! It’s always fun meeting people from your neck of the woods when you’re abroad, especially on America’s Birthday!

The car ride takes about an hour from the center of Chiang Mai, during which they showed us a brief video giving a quick safety tutorial and run down on what to expect. We have to say, from the minute we were picked up Flight of the Gibbon did an amazing job making everyone feel extremely comfortable and safe.

Once we arrived we met our two guides, Paik and Sunit (AKA Sunny), who strapped us into our harnesses and got us ready for the day ahead.

After another quick ride we were ready to start flying! We weren’t sure what to expect when we got to the first platforms (after all, only Nick had been ziplining before and that was more than 10 years ago), but as soon as we arrived we were relived. The platforms looked like they could have been brand new and all of the gear they use can hold more than 15 times the weight that they actual subjected it to… we were happy to hear this since we’ve been stuffing our faces with delicious Thai food for the past week.

The first couple of zips were only about 50 to 100 meters long to get everyone feeling comfortable with letting a stranger push us off a platform almost 70 meters high, but after the first few times we were feeling great and ready for the famous 800 meter zip! Throughout the day we were zipping and zooming through the tree canopy, climbing over suspension bridges and repelling down platforms. We felt like Superman and Spiderman all rolled into one… We might be on the brink of the next great superhero!

Oh and did we mention that we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a few Gibbons?! What is a Gibbon? It’s a small, tree loving ape that might just be the cutest thing on earth! All we’re saying is we wouldn’t mind having a few Gibbons swinging around us in NYC.

Overall, it took us about two hours to complete the course, which seemed to fly by (get it?? FLY by!). After finishing the final repel there was a car waiting to take us back to the Flight of the Gibbon headquarters. Once we got back we were greeted with a full spread of delicious Thai dishes for lunch.

After we finished scarfing down our food and enjoying a Tiger Beer at 11:00 in the morning (it’s every American’s duty to drink at least one beer on the 4th of July where ever you are in the world), there was an option to take a five minute ride to a local waterfall. We talked it over with our group and decided that we all definitely wanted to check it out. The waterfall wasn’t the most impressive and the 10 minute walk climbing up what seemed to be endless steps didn’t help it’s cause.

However, on our way back we made up for the disappointing waterfall by stopping at a local coffee shop. This might not sound very exciting, but it was up in the mountains overlooking the rainforest making for an incredible view to enjoy a cup of coffee. We both sipped some iced cappuccinos to help cool down after our waterfall trek.

Although we weren’t home to celebrate the 4th of July, we think ziplining and screaming like 5 year olds through the Thai Rainforest more than made-up for the all the beer pong games and fireworks we missed at home!

Thank you Flight of the Gibbon for hosting us during our trip.

As always, our opinions are our own as we Talk Travel!