Woke up this morning in Siem Reap to the buzzing of tuk tuks. Our flight leaves Cambodia this morning, bound for Bangkok, to catch our connection to Auckland, NZ. We're preparing for a long day.

We arrived in Bangkok without any major problems. We had just over six hours to wait in the airport before our flight to New Zealand. Checking in at the Thai Airways counter proved to be disasterous. They told us that our reservation had been cancelled by STA and there were no more seats left on the plane! Panic, anger, frustration. Everyone loves airports. Apparently, when we changed our plane ticket with STA in China and left Beijing a day early on Sept 17th, they cancelled our ticket for the 18th, AND our ticket to Auckland. Our only option, as the airline was not responsible, was to call STA in Bangkok (and it was about to close). When we explained that the Beijing STA office cancelled our tickets, the Bangkok STA guy asked, "Why would they do that?" response, "I don't KNOW, dude!" He basically told us the only thing we could do would be to sit stand by that night, and maybe get out the next day at 8pm. So, we waited for hours, hoping.

About 20 minutes before the 'totally full flight' was about to board, our names were miraculously called. Bec was on the phone with her mom and simply said, "Oh my gosh, I think Matt and I got on the flight, gotta go to New Zealand. Love you, bye" Here's the funny part. In the last 10 minutes, we realized we hadn't sent the post cards we had bought and our Thai stamps wouldn't work in New Zealand. We frantically wrote a few and gave them to a ticket agent that said he would mail them.

The flight to Auckland was great. God bless Thai airways. Bec played video games and learned a bit of Spanish on the little TV screen, and I watched Die Hard 4. God Bless Bruce Willis too. We arrived in Auckland and took the city bus to our hostel, Surf n' Snow. First order of business was to buy Matt a pair of shoes after his were stolen in Thailand; all he had were flip flops. A new pair of sneakers, some wool socks for both of us, and a warm Starbucks tea, and we were back in business. We did laundry, and decided to go to bed early. The 10-share dorm was fully packed and there were people coming in and out all night. We didn't sleep a wink. Ugghh! The next morning, all that was ahead of us was a 3-week bus tour of New Zealand, that left at 7:00 am.