Border crossings are always an adventurous process. But, when trying to move 49 people across the Thai border into Cambodia this adventure becomes like attempting to summit the Himalayas. I thought you might enjoy a window into travel days from the squad leader perspective. So, here is my attempt to share a little of what life looked like for Ashley and I as we maneuvered our group from Santo Domingo to Phnom Penh.
Our travel began at 4:00 a.m. on March 3rd from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Our group split into two separate flights, mine leaving first with 16 of the racers. Our flight took us to Miami International Airport where we had a scheduled hour and ½ to go through customs/immigration before boarding our cross-country flight to Los Angeles. We managed to land early and get everyone through in time to grab some food and eat before re-boarding. We were thrilled; Pizza Hut & Starbucks…next door to each other. Bienvenido A Miami! We arrived in Los Angeles about 2:30 p.m. and then began the process of collecting bags, getting something to eat, and waiting on the second flight to arrive. Standing at baggage I turned on my US cell phone and found I had a message. The message was from Casey, one of our staff at the office in Gainesville. She had called to tell me that we had an issue and I needed to call when I landed. When I called, she informed me that one of our racers had become sick in the airport and passed out in the security line. She, and the two racers with her, had then been taken to the hospital. Without any way of knowing what was going on Ashley, and the other racers, had boarded the plane and until just before take off thought all was well. When news made it to Ashley from the ticket counter the girls had already been sent to the hospital and the flight crew was ready to go. At that point the only option was to re-board the plane and escort the rest of the racers to LA and attempt to handle things from there as best we could.
To add a little “stress” (fun, but still stressful) to the situation, we had an overnight layover in LA so we had to find places for 49 racers to sleep. Many either had family in the area or family that paid for rooms. We even had some who braved the friendly skies (& the 12 short hours we had on the ground) to fly out to see their racer in the flesh. As you can imagine, once Ashley and I had all the racers accounted for, and aware of their return time for the next morning, we went to our hotel for the night. We immediately began making phone calls to find out about our racers stranded in Miami and calls to Casey to find out how we were going to get those three caught back up with the rest of us. We ended the night by ordering Domino’s pizza and watching American Idol then collapsing into our beds. The next morning we got hot showers (GLORIOUS!! especially since it was cold in LA). At the airport everyone got through check in and security without a hitch and we began leg 2 of our journey to Cambodia.
The flight to Bangkok was 21 hours. We had a layover in Tokyo, where I had flashbacks of a trip with C Squad, my race, going from Asia to Central America. (I miss you guys!) We arrived in Bangkok about 11:30 p.m. went through customs/immigration and found our YWAM contacts. We arrived at the YWAM base about 1:30 a.m., split up into different rooms and crashed, but not for long, since our bus to the Cambodian border was going to arrive at 7:30 that morning. Because of our racers stranded in the States, we left two of our guys in Bangkok that morning so the girls wouldn’t have to travel alone. After a quick breakfast from 7-11 the rest of the group traveled the three hours from Bangkok to the border on a Thai version of a double-decker bus including a flat screen T.V. and a bottle of water for every seat. Cameron was on our bus and he is the movie king of this race. He gave Indiana Jones to the driver and we watched the Holy Grail. It was a little slice of heaven. At the border, we got everyone unloaded with their bags on donkey carts, pulled by small Cambodian men, and we walked the 1/2 mile to the border. After crossing out of Thailand into No Man’s Land we were supposed to have met our YWAM contact. Just as everyone crosses through border patrol our bus driver walks up with a gentleman who appears to know what he is doing. We follow him to the Cambodian side of the border where he takes us to a restaurant for an amazing lunch buffet and he goes, with our passports, to get their visas. Now, I know a logical person is saying to themselves right now; you never give anyone your passport. Well, that is, in most cases a true statement. However at border crossings in foreign countries this is how it is done for large groups a lot of times. He returns shortly with everyone’s passports and their new visas for Cambodia affixed to the inside. We cross over into Cambodia, getting our stamps, and begin the wait for our bus. At this point, I ask our contact where our buses are and he asks me if we have one arranged. I borrowed his phone to call Chris, our YWAM contact, who informs me that they thought we were coming in the day before and they couldn’t find a bus to come back today so we would just need to find a bus there. It was already after lunch and Phnom Penh, our destination, was 10 hours away. Most bus drivers did not want to help us at all. Our little guy, who had been amazing so far, kicked into gear finding us some busses. We found out, after talking to his boss, that he worked for the Tourist Information Center. He got us two busses that took us to Phnom Penh, for a hefty price. We arrived at 1:30 that morning bringing our total travel time to 81 hours and 30 minutes. After a couple of days of orientation Team Spectacle and myself loaded another bus and drove 6 hours back toward Thailand where we stopped off at our ministry site in Siem Reap. It is always smart to sign up for Air Miles, but after this trip I wish that we got points for ground travel too. At least we have a story to tell about that one time when we traveled around the world…
