Alright I’m back as promised! I shall not delay so let’s get back into it. Let’s start in Hong Kong where we stayed for a little over a week.
So our squad met back up in Taiwan at the end to take a plane over to Hong Kong which was only about 2 hours if that, so it was a pretty easy flight the only rough part was we were probably in the airport for like 6 or so hours that day so we were quite exhausted. It was only about an hour drive away to get to the YWAM base where we were staying for a couple days. After that I was out like a light!
We headed to the Chinese Visa office early that morning to get everything squared away so that we could go into China as soon as possible. Ahhh yes and that is where things get a little hairy! It’s about an hour or so trip to get there. Thought I had everything they needed but when I get up there they told me to get new passport pictures that I took in America so hit number one. Also wanted me to get a copy of my drivers license, hit number 2. And then… I needed this paper that said I planned to stay there for a month and whoops, that was at the place we were staying…an hour plus away…hit number three. Plus it was like 1:30 and they closed at 4, just a little time crunch. So me and Stone got the first taxi we could find and got as close as we could to the base. I ran to get my paper and then literally ran about a mile and a half straight up sprinting to get to the train that takes us almost to the Visa office. Sweating some hardcore bullets at this moment! Somehow only by God slowing down time or whatever He did we make it back and not only did we make it we were an hour early! Woot woot check me out!
Visa Office: 0
Zach: 1
So applications are in let’s now transfer to the next few days where we camped for a week at a campsite to save some money as Hong Kong is PRICEY, at least on our budget. Things got real crazy…REAL QUICK. We roll up and it’s like a party here. There’s people everywhere with their tents up and they’ve got what look like Christmas lights around their tents and their own camping stoves. I felt like a barbarian walking in there knowing that I had a lighter to start a fire and had to gather wood and would be cooking cans of food over what we hoped would become a fire. Shoutout though, we got a fire pretty quickly so we got to eat that night.
But then… The water buffalo and boar tag team begins… These guys were all just a bunch of punks. We named the two water buffalos Daisy and Nubs. So first day I’m laughing at our other squad mates across the field as Daisy literally walked in their tent and took some of their food and then Aaron starts herding them like cattle to which obviously we can’t hear anything so we basically dubbed what we expected them to be saying. Quite entertaining if I do say so myself. I got payback for laughing because when I came back over from checking out the crime scene to sharing with my team what happened I glance over and this beast made it all the way over and is eating a pack of my ramen. I mean, plastic, noodles and all. So lesson number one don’t leave ANYTHING out or it will get eaten. I probably deserved that one though.
This could get long so I’ll sum it up. Boars ripped through about 3 or 4 tents while we were there, had to chase them away, console some little kids, pray that they didn’t attack. It was rough. Heard from a local that stays there that the boars will get the food and then the water buffalo stomp on it to pieces. Pretty hardcore.
I’ll share one more experience there and call it quits. Sorry it’s about the boars again but it’s a good one. So I had just come back from an exhausting day going back to the Visa office two hours away two days in a row so I was not thinking about anything much. I just plopped my bag down on the table ate some food and went to hang out with some people in another part of the camp. Just chillin there when Allie felt like she needed to go check out the camp and I casually asked her to check if my bag was on the table because I couldn’t remember. This is where it gets interesting. Her and Molly go over and see JD holding a shovel and he says the boar has Zach’s bag and he’s carrying it into the woods! So they throw a rock at the monster and they run down and are finally able to get it back. Thank God! It ripped through the whole center of my bag which was a sad moment. But the thing is it had my interview paper that I NEEDED to interview the next day at the Visa office. Also all of my personal cash and cards, our team cash and cards, and all of our team’s emergency cash. That could have been a bad day!
I swear there were demons in those little oinkers trying to stop us from making it to China. But they failed because guess what, we made it to Chinaaaaaaa! Which leads me to the end of this blog which I hope you enjoyed because I was basically in tears from laughter as I was replaying it all in my mind! China is coming in a little bit so stay tuned and subscribe so you can get it straight to your email! Peace!
