Zip line hotel laos

Electricity is supplied by a waterfall-powered turbine, while the evening banquet we enjoy in the restaurant area at the base of the falls — fistfuls of sticky rice and marinated meats, eaten communally, straight from a banana leaf, and washed down with lao-lao , throat-shredding rice whisky — has all been sourced from the villages that dot the park's periphery.

In , the Laos government cited ecotourism as a keystone of its Millennium Development Goals — aimed at lifting the country out of the world's 20 poorest by And projects like this one give cause for optimism.

In a region where illegal poaching and tree felling are rife, the Treetop Explorer has brought sustainable jobs, and a portion of its profits is channelled into conservation. Baffling as our intrusion might be for the forest's endangered yellow-cheeked gibbons — which are often spotted cavorting among the foliage that flanks the cataracts — they are benefiting, indirectly, from our presence.

At night, as I lie under my mosquito net immersed in the canopy's insect thrum, I can drift off with my conscience clear. And it pays to rest well. Soon after you wake — to the smell of Bolaven coffee and the accelerating whine of people zipping off for breakfast — the Explorer tempts you into further high jinks.

There are trekking routes, of course, several of them heading to nearby beauty spots, and if that's too pedestrian, a via ferrata — a vertical climb of iron pegs and hand-grips, an idea imported from Italy's Dolomites — ensures that the journey up to the plateau is as heroic as the route down.

But I already know where I'm heading this morning: a wooden platform, 20 minutes out of camp, where another steel wire offers the longest flight path of all. For when a zipline runs between two A-frames in an adventure playground it is a moment's fun. When it runs for m across a jungle ravine, through wisps of mist and splayed thickets of bamboo, past oceans of green and distant waterfalls, it transports you into the realms of the magically surreal.

This time when I clip back on, there is no hesitation. Local buses can be booked in Chiang Mai from around Dh Standing 30 metres to 50m above dense jungle in Laos's Nam Kan National Park — and traditionally only accessible to monkeys — these are the world's highest tree houses.

As part of the Gibbon Experience, adventurous travellers zip line their way through 15 kilometres of jungle canopy and, as the name suggests, the spectators of your feat will be hairier than average. The canopy set-up serves as a unique nature observatory and every dirham of the money raised from the tourism project goes back into the conservation of the forest and our new friends that call it home. It's a worthwhile cause in the burgeoning field of ecotourism — plus there's the hair-raising elation that comes with the incredible zip lines and the glorious vistas of a misty rainforest that can be accessed in no other way.

Zip-lining above the jungle canopy. In Huay Xai province in northern Laos, I clamber into a ramshackle rickshaw, where excited faces quickly cloud over as we turn on to steep winding roads. And the only way to tackle that is on foot. I think of Tarzan and his flowing mane as he swings gracefully from vine to vine — before the force of the wind takes my breath away and my own tresses billow wildly. Next, an almighty rush of adrenalin hits my gut.

A post shared by The Gibbon Experience gibbonexperience. I realise that my eyes are shut. I force them open to bullfrog capacity, and my jaw simultaneously drops as though I'm catching flies. The best option to spot gibbons.

Go deeper into the National Park. Less wildlife but more zip lines. Because we build the world highest tree houses you can wake up surrounded by gibbons. Visiting its treetops, you are protecting the Nam Kan National Park.

Hundreds of forest people now make a living from this conservation project.