Vacation Horror Story

It was the summer of 2004 that I remember the episode my friends and I like to call "Shanghai-ed In High Tide." My friends and I had just finished with high school graduation and we wanted one last hurrah, one last get-together of one more memorable adventure with all of us together before we parted our separate ways and went to our own colleges across the United States.

My friend Eric had a pen pal in Hong Khong who he had written to profusely over the year and since none of my friends had been to China before or anywhere else outside of the United States for that matter, we decided to roll the dice and take the trip. Why not, we said. What do we have to lose? Before you could say the words, "I told you so" the answer we were about to find out was "plenty."

Off we went on July 3 of 2004 on our trip to China. I went with three of my closest friends, Joe, Eric, and Rob and we searched for new memories to share for the rest of our lives. By the time we came back we had a very tale tall indeed that few people believe and to this day I have a hard time believing myself.

We took an American Airline plane to China and when we were on the ground we had planned on staying with the pen pal who my friend Eric had kept in touch with in Hong Khong. The plane ride went smoothly thankfully and all was well until we entered customs in China. Now for anyone who has ever visited China, customs can be very tough to pass through with or without illegal items like cigars or drugs in your luggage or possession. The first thing to go wrong was that my friend Joe had his passport checked multiple times over. I was standing next to him when he had a look of bewilderment on his face. I had passed through the metal detector fine and my passport checked out as usual and the Chinese guards let me pass through. Next up was my friend Joe and ust as he was about to pass through a security dog started barking furiously at Joe. Now clearly joe was not a terrorist but the guards still checked all of our belongings thoroughly. We waited 1 hour until they finally let Joe go. They wouldn't even tell us why we were being held at the customs checkpoint. During that time period, two armed guards had surrounded us just in case to make sure we weren't going any where.

When we were released, I asked my friend Eric to contact his Chinese pen pal. He had a cell phone that could make international calls so I didn't anticipate a problem. We first decided to walk towards a Chinese store to grab something to eat. While we were walking, it started raining and boy did we get soaked! In any case, we didn't have umbrellas so we decided to walk into a clothing store to dry off. My friend Eric pulled out the piece of paper that was in his pocket that contained the phone number and address of his pen pal in China. Thats when he said the dreaded words, "Uh-Oh." I knew that couldn't be good. Eric turned to me with a grimace on his face. My two other friends Joe and Rob looked at Eric as well and we all knew that the piece of paper Eric was holding in his hand no longer contained that phone number. The rain has soaked the piece of paper and the address was no longer legible. We were stuck in China, in the middle of Hong Khong, with hardly any money to spend and no destination to head to.

We walked and walked until we were too tired. We entered what looked like the heart of Hong Khong with one factory sweatshop after another. We looked at the tired workers coming out of the factories and one man named Kim helped us out, He took us to this little shack which he owned which was surrounded by other litlte shacks which other poor people lived in. The shack kept us dry, barely. There were holes in the shack and mosquitos were being bred everywhere. When the rain stopped, we were covered in mosquito bites and needless to say, we were scratching ourselves all day long. By the time the day had ended, we were all sick with a head cold and sneezing from the soaking rain.

The next day our fortunes turned as we found what seemed to be a hotel or motel in Hong Khong. My friend Rob had his parents wire him money to pay for the motel to stay in for the next couple of days.

We never did find Eric's pen pal and I don't even remember his name. On the flight back, I looked at my friends all covered in bug bites and sneezing all over the place. Then they looked back at me and we all laughed hysterically.

In the end, it made for some funny pictures and a godo story to tell.