You don’t have to be in Chiang Mai long to realise that one of the top activities is ziplining. The runaway market leader seems to be Flight Of The Gibbon but we just couldn’t afford it so looked for alternatives.
There are plenty of other companies but we settled on Eagletrack due to the good reviews online (plus no-one had died) and the price. It was less than half the cost of Flight Of The Gibbon (in fairness I do think you get a lot more for your money with them) for the ‘Silver’ package which would give us 3 hours of zip lining and other treetop fun.
We were picked up on time from our apartment and after a few pickups we were on our way to the ‘HQ’. It was around a 30-45 min drive away, I can’t remember exactly as we were all massively hungover from the night before so our enthusiasm at the start was virtually nil.
Arriving at the centre, it was all a bit confusing – usually with these things (such as Go Ape in the UK) you’re put into a group and shown about the harnesses and given a safety briefing. Here, we all lined up and staff put on all the harnesses for us, not telling us a thing about what we were being given. It was slightly bizarre.
Luckily after a short ride up the hill and at the start of the first zip line we were given a brief overview of what we needed to do to not die. One major difference to doing this in England was the addition of a manual ‘brake’ which was a wooden stick that we were supposed to drag along the zip line to slow us down. This worried me somewhat.
However the first zip line went well (even though I came in far too fast due to not being familiar with the brake) and we were soon well into it. Rope bridges, high lines, and of course plenty more zip lines followed.
Sadly with the requirement to hold the brake stick, and our lack of a GoPro harness, the only videos we have are of us setting off and coming in. Here are Katy and Emily disappearing into oblivion:
My favourite was the longest zip line, of course. I think it was this one:
There were also 2 abseils/rappels included – the first of which was 15 metres and the second 40 metres, and the time I as actually a little scared – the guides would always ask if you wanted to go down slow or just free fall – answering slow got you a free fall anyway so I went for it both times. It was kind of terrifying but also totally awesome.
After the last abseil the guide announced we would be going for lunch. Great I thought, get some food and then get back out there. Except that was it, we’d done the whole silver course. I felt a bit short changed at first but actually we had done everything promised – because I was enjoying it so much the time just flew by!
So after a tasty buffet lunch we were on our way back to Chiang Mai, with our souvenir T-Shirts and certificates of course…
The silver package cost us 1,900 Baht per person and in our opinion was well worth it considering the cost of competitors.