Day 18: Yet another flight

There isn’t a whole lot to say about today.  We knew our flight in Hong Kong would be close, so when we got to the airport and found out that our flight out was delayed by 45 minutes, we knew we would never make it.  Finally, they found a flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok that both Greg and I could get on.

Beijing's check in is even bigger than Hong Kong's

The flight from Hong Kong to Beijing went by fairly quickly.  Between Greg and I sat a girl who grew up along the Chinese-North Korean border.  Her entire family farmed, and she decided she didn’t want that, so she studied, got into college, which was paid for by her mom’s entire life savings.  When she finished and got a job, she was able to pay her mom back in full within the year.  She decided to move to Beijing when her mom told her she needed to get married and have a baby, which isn’t what she wanted, so she got away.  In fact, she was flying to a vacation on the beaches of Vietnam without telling her mom, because there is no way her mom would let her go.  It was quite an interesting story.

In Hong Kong, our new flight was also delayed by about 45 minutes, which gave us just the right amount of time to relax in the lounge and grab a snack before continuing on.  Even though it was slightly longer, the flight to Bangkok went by even quicker because I slept for the majority of the flight.  I also read up on what we need to do to cross the border into Cambodia.  Immigrations in Bangkok was quick, and, surprisingly, we actually got both of our bags!  The taxi ride took a while in the rain and the traffic, but it wasn’t too bad.  We walked around the hotel for a bit, looking for some food, but ended up just eating in the hotel restaurant.

What not to bring/do in the taxi.

Tomorrow at 6am our car leaves for Cambodia.  We will drive three to four hours to the border, cross, and then find another car and drive 2 more hours to Siem Reap.  We should have internet access at our hotel, but who knows if it will work or be reliable.  We did decide to take both of our bags, since Thailand’s national elections are tomorrow, and if a certain candidate loses, he will pay people to riot in the streets in downtown Bangkok, where we would be leaving our stuff.  Hopefully all will go well, and tomorrow I will update from Cambodia!