Zipline & Jungle Flight Courses

How a rescued gibbon started an entire industry

Chiang Mai's zipline scene has a genuinely unusual origin story. In 2007, the founders of what became Flight of the Gibbon — now widely credited as the first zipline company in Thailand and, by some accounts, in all of Asia — came across a gibbon trapped in a cage deep in the jungle near Mae Kampong village, left to die. They rehabilitated the animal and eventually reintroduced it into the forest canopy, where it later gave birth to offspring — the first gibbons to live wild in the Chiang Mai area in decades. That rescue gave the company both its name and its founding purpose: rather than a pure adventure-tourism venture, Flight of the Gibbon built its zipline courses specifically to fund ongoing conservation work, and the company still directs a share of profits toward primate rehabilitation, reforestation and ecological education programmes, with a dedicated ranger watching for poachers around the reintroduced gibbon population. Mae Kampong itself, an hour east of the city, remained the operator's home base for over a decade and has since become a destination in its own right, known for its well-preserved village culture as much as for the zipline running above it.

What a typical course involves

Several operators now run canopy zipline courses in the forested hills around Chiang Mai, stringing together a series of ziplines, sky bridges and platforms through the tree canopy, with courses varying in scale from shorter introductory circuits to longer, multi-hour routes with dozens of stations. The original Mae Kampong course, for reference, runs roughly 5 km of combined zipline distance across around 30 stations, including one of the longer and faster single zipline runs in Asia at over 800 metres, plus sky bridges and abseil descents woven through old-growth rainforest between Mae Takhrai and Chae Son national parks. Expect a safety briefing and harness fitting before you start, then a guided progression from platform to platform, typically with two trained guides accompanying each group of up to around nine people — clipping you in and out at every station rather than leaving that to participants, a meaningfully higher safety standard than some self-clip zipline setups found elsewhere in the world.

What to look for when choosing an operator

• Safety equipment and briefing quality — a thorough briefing, visibly well-maintained harnesses and lines, and guides who physically clip you in rather than relying on you to do it yourself are all good signs.
• Course length — number of stations and total zipline distance varies significantly between operators, which affects both price and time commitment; a full day out (including transport, the course itself, and often lunch and a waterfall stop) is common for the more established operators.
• Group size — smaller groups generally mean less waiting between stations.
• Conservation angle — if that side of the experience matters to you, ask directly what percentage of the fee (if any) goes toward local conservation or community programmes, since this varies significantly between operators.

Practical tips

Wear closed-toe shoes and clothes you can move in; most operators provide harnesses and helmets. Transport to and from the course is usually included in the booking, since these sites are typically outside the city in forested terrain — a full-day experience with pickup, the course itself, lunch and drop-off back at your hotel is the standard format for the more established operators.

Sources & further reading

• Flight of the Gibbon Chiang Mai — course details and history