After a three-hour drive on the highway through central Laos, we, four volunteers, finally arrived at camp. First impressions: pretty swanky…really. Like a good campsite in the UK. There is an eco lodge with a swimming pool right next door to the camp that volunteers can use. As you enter the camp itself, you see some really nice thatched, open-sided structures to the right of the road (these turn out to be a visitors’ centre and an educational centre) before winding further up the hill, where the car finally stops. Then it is a short walk through a thicket of bamboo to the volunteers’ toilet block to the left ( men and women separately). Volunteers relaxing area in front, and then behind several stilted huts where we will sleep. Once again, she who snores gets her own hut!

These facilities are the best I have known yet. Proper toilets, proper showers, fridges, microwave, toaster, hobs, water dispenser. Rooms with fans, proper bedding, electricity all day, and curtains! Outside each room, a balcony with a table and chairs. This is going to be just perfect.

Everyone here seems so nice too. In total there are 30 odd staff. The Director is American, the main vet (Darya) an escapee from Russia, a French Site Manager (Louis), Australian Animal Manager ( Shay), Dutch Animal Behaviourist (Tom) and then 20 plus Lao staff. Truly International, so perfect.

At the moment there are also 2 employed volunteers Ella, another animal behaviourist from Hampshire who has worked on projects in Africa and Zoos in the UK. And Yan̈nick from Belgium but currently working at Liverpool University in Animal Diagnostics. Pandemics seem to be his speciality. He is here to work in the vets centre.

Then there are 4 volunteers: Apart from me, a super couple from Germany, Nici and Lucas who are on the last leg of a 6 month trip ( Indonesia, New Zealand, Phillipines, Vietnam and then here). He is a carpenter, she a child psychologist ( both highly sort after skills that means they can take lots of time out). Then lastly Daisy, an eighteen-year-old Londoner ‘doing’ Asia before she starts her studies at Leeds Uni in September. Well, I said there was four of us, but then there was three! Daisy got out of the car, disappeared for four hours, went to bed and left in a taxi at 11am this morning saying that this “wasn’t for her” even though she hadn’t even tried it. Gen Zee, I so worry about them.

I was woken this morning at 6am to the sound of gibbons staking out their territory ( main picture). These are ‘chilling’ calls that I will try to record and add later as, by all accounts, this is a daily routine. Then breakfast of boiled egg, toast, peanut butter and coffee (yum) before the 7am team meeting ( pic below) where work for the day is delegated.

I am to go with Ella to what they call the ‘upstairs primate area’. Enclosure D 1 and 2. Oh my…..what a hard climb in the heat of the morning. Only to do this all over again in even more stiffling heat at 2pm in the afternoon. In the morning the job was to feed the white and yellow cheeked gibbons and Laos Langurs, and then, once out of the holding areas where most of them get fed, we were to ‘muck out’ the pens to remove all food debris, poo and half chewed leaves. Including, on Mondays, the once a week routine of bleaching down the area too.

In the centre, visitors and volunteers are strictly not allowed to touch any animal and face masks to be worn by everyone around the primates. All animals at the centre are victims of trafficking and the centre will try where possible to get them back in to the forest after a period of rehabilitation. That is all except the crocodiles and bears. More on those later.

After lunch – to slightly diversify – we then made lollipops for the 21 bears in the center! This meant going out in to the forest to machete down the two fattest bamboo stalks we could find. Our resident carpenter, Lucas, naturally set to cutting these in to 3m long sticks whilst Nici and I cut up food treats to pack inside them. Then add water and freeze for the yummiest bear treats possible. Apparently, this is a much loved enriching treat for them. Tom repeated that we must make 21 pieces in total, no more, no less or we could have a bear fight on our hands!

Still another job to do before wrapping up at 4pm. I was to join Tom and four of the Lao men to go back up to the ‘upstairs’ enclosures, but this time to D3 where they were giving fluid, milk and drugs to a struggling baby red-shanked dour langur. A critically endangered species and soooo incredibly cute.

Shower, dinner. 9pm. Sorry folks, I need to call it a night! I have to wake up at gibbon o’clock!