The dark night ride ...

To set The scene ... (sorry no photos - too shell shocked to be thinking about that).

Back in Australia: I'm at my Mum & Dad's in Foster. I pick up a Reader's Digest just for a casual read. First story I flip to is a story about a Filipino lady and her American son who are kidnapped by rebels, both eventually escape but the 16 year old boy is kept for 5 months before escaping. Back at home - we are having our carpets cleaned by Filipino's. He asks us "What part of the Philippines?"
Sean says "Mindanao" He says ' Ooh that's dangerous - lots of  kidnappings" Yeah! Then while we are in KL someone else says the same thing - who is this whispering in my ear? The devil instilling fear or God warning us.

I'm not normally fearful but when I am not in control of my circumstances fear lurks in every dark shadow. Good conditions for God to teach me to trust Him to a deeper level.

So we hop into a big van with a strange taxi driver, and four other strangers. One man speaks English, Chinese and Filipino - he is a good man. At first we think he is Buddhist but it turns out he is a very devoted Christian. Mandy is ringing him every hour to make sure we are OK.

We leave Davou and head up into the mountains (calm down Colleen it's OK). We are crammed in like sardines. It is mountainous, windy, dark, and bucketing with rain. We stop at a local eatery (Amy & Jonathan are not happy) -first cultural experience. Back on the road.

The road was horrendous.  40% of the road was normal 60%  has moon size craters, sleep was elusive. I knew if I slept time would go fast. My butt hurt, my legs ached, my head kept bouncing off the window and Amy was stretched across my lap. We left Davou at about 5:30pm, at 10pm the van was stopped at a check point.There were about 10 soldiers with M16's shining torches in the windows - cultural experience No 2. There were another 10 soldiers on the other side of the road! Eventually I slept and when I woke up we were pulling up to a servo in CDO.

Mandy was waiting for us - it was 1am. Straight to the Marco Hotel and into bed.

Writing about it a week and a half later and it doesn't seem so bad. I guess you had to be there!