Tuesday, October 14, 2008

My Journey

It took me 46 hours door-to-door to get from Kissick's house to the hostel in Sydney. I flew 15 hours to Gaungzhou, China, waited there for 15 hours, and then flew another 10 hours to Sydney. My plan was to leave the airport and go walk around Gaungzhou for the day, but when I got to customs, they wouldn't let me leave because I had no boarding pass to Sydney and no Chinese Visa. A woman took my passport and told me, "You there wait." Everyone left customs and I stood there for half an hour... alone. I was the only person around. I was sure they had stolen my passport and I was going to have to bribe the police to get it back. Finally, they came back and two people escorted me to my gate and told me repeatedly I was not allowed to leave. I slept as much as I could, but was starving. I went to a restaurant and ordered some food off a menu that made no sense because the English was so broken. Two eggs, two pieces of ham, a coffee, an orange juice and a water cost me $40 American. I thought China was supposed to be cheap. I starved myself all day and then an hour before my flight I couldn't take it anymore and bought three chicken wings for $7. I couldn't wait to leave the airport, but my flight got delayed an hour. When I finally got to Sydney I had to wait an hour for the shuttle. It was worth it though because after I ate and showered at the hostel, Jesse, Lindberg and Erin showed up and we got down to business.

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