Well, I think I can be honest and say that China was not my favorite place that we've been thus far on the Race; this was mostly due to the freezing cold temperatures and the sun-blocking smog, but either way I have to admit that I wasn't devastated when it was time to leave China after spending a few days in Beijing for debrief, which included a trip to the Great Wall, by the way. We brought in the New Year with a small party thrown for us by the Leo Hostel then took off the afternoon of January 1. From there, it was your totally typical World Race travel day…
The bus was supposed to pick us up at 1:30 to go to the airport, but never came. So a different bus finally picked us up at 4 and off we went. Practically every person got stopped through security for questionable substances in their checked bags, including myself, which meant I had to take out all of the junk stuffed in my airporter and dig through my pack to find what was making the scanning device beep. It was my can of DEET bug spray, go figure. We finally got through security and realized there is no moderately priced food in the Beijing airport, but there IS a Starbucks AND a Baskin Robins–ice cream for dinner! Our flight out of Beijing was delayed 3 hours, give or take, but the airline gave us free egg salad sandwiches and coke.
Our plane finally lands in Seoul, South Korea at around 2 AM or so, and it's madness. There are 60 World Racers who have had no internet for a month and there's FREE WI-FI in the Seoul International Airport. Props Korea. I've never seen so many people Skype and Facetime at once in my life. Somehow, our flight out of Korea was ON TIME, and we left at promptly 7:25 AM. Miracles happen. Props again Korea.
We arrive in Manila, Philippines and it's SCORCHING hot. After we wait in the lobby of the airport for a couple hours figuring everything out, teams finally part ways; my team and team Yebo climb into two vans (that's 14 racers PLUS all of our stuff) and head on to a different airport where we'll fly out to Mindanao, the island where we'll be serving. We get to the check in desk and find out that: our checked bags can only weigh 10 kg and our carry-ons 7. We can have unlimited checked bags, but only 1 carry-on. "It's time to get creative!" says Isaac. Make it through check-in, by the grace of God, and proceed to wait for our flight, which is a few hours delayed of course.
I believe we left at last around 930 or so, but don't quote me on that. Travel deliriousness had definitely set in by then. We collect our bags, all 30 of them since they had to be so light, and set out for Mt. Moriah in two vans in the pouring rain. AND our drivers treat us with a quick stop to McDonalds because it's a two-hour drive. Two hours? Pshhhhh. After our van over heated once and the back hatch fell open twice, one time during which an airporter fell out and had to be found, two hours turned into 3+ hours and we finally clambered exhaustedly into our dorm-style rooms around 3:30 AM. Thank You, Jesus, that the next day we didn't have to meet with our new contact until noon (:
