After a tearful goodbye to Cambodia, we began our adventure
to Australia.
The adventure started with a 7 and a half hour bus ride to
the Cambodia/Vietnam border. Then while
trying to leave Cambodia it was discovered that we overstayed our visas by 4
days. So every person had to pay $20 and
they wrote individual receipts for the 44 of us. After 2 hours of receipt writing, unloading
the bus, scanning our bags, and reloading the bus, we made it into
Vietnam.
After being in Vietnam for about 5 minutes our bus hits a
motorbike. A motorbike that someone was
driving. It was so scary but the man
was OK. He was up and walking around
with no physical injuries, just a ripped shirt.
The Lord was definitely watching out for him. So after about half an hour at the accident
site, we headed onto Ho Chi Minh city. 2
hours later we arrived at our hotel in Ho Chi Minh. Our hotel is downtown so it’s really crazy
busy and loud. After settling in, we go
out to eat some Pho, which was delicious by the way. After that we were so exhausted by our long
day of busing, we went to sleep. The
next morning we got to hang out in the city for a while before our bus left for
the airport at 3. While exploring, me,
Chelsea Hughes, and Jessie found a Catholic church and tried to break in. We were unsuccessful at breaking and entering
the Catholic church, but we were very intrigued to find one in Vietnam. As we were loading up our bus, Steven dropped
his passport. Well some Vietnamese men
saw it and picked it up and told him he had dropped it. Instead of just nicely returning the
passport, they began demanding money for a finder’s fee. After 15 minutes of arguing they finally
returned the passport and we paid them a little Dong to be done with it. We successfully made it to the airport. We arrived at 4 and found out we couldn’t
check in until 7. They also had scales
so because this airline has a tight policy of 20 kg for a checked bag we were
all weighing our bags and then freaking out because we were pretty much all
over weight. So there were 44 people
frantically searching through their packs throwing out toiletries, putting on
extra layers of clothes, and reorganizing our day packs and big packs to even
out the weight. After finally organizing
all our stuff we had to wait our remaining couple of hours before check in.
So we wait patiently and eagerly approach the airline
counter to check-in. Lo and behold we
come to find out that Surprise! We need visas to go to Australia! Thankfully Australia is a very welcoming
country and has a quick and easy way to apply for visas online. So 44 of us get on the painfully slow
internet and apply for our Australian visas.
Jesus was definitely with us and everyone got their visas and through
customs and security in plenty of time for the flight. Now most of us are still very dehydrated from
our travel day before so we’re excited about our free beverages on the
plane. So we get on to discover that we’re
on a budget flight so all we get is one tiny glass of water. It was ok though because it was only a 5 hour
flight. Once we landed in Australia (now
15 and a half hours ahead of Central time) our contacts were there waiting for
us. We came straight to the YWAM base
and got settled in and slept. It’s so
good to finally be here!! Thank you
Jesus for getting us here safely and giving us a great place to stay in Darwin,
Australia!
