We catch our taxi at 6:00 am. It’s a short 15-minute ride to the Koh Samui airport. Check-in, immigration, and security are all short, easy lines, at this small airport. Bangkok Airways calls itself a “boutique airline”, and they have nice lounge areas available to all passengers with free snacks and drinks. The flight is less than an hour, and they manage to serve food onboard, and get everything cleaned up by the time we land.

The Bangkok Airport is a maze of long hallways and poor signage. We eventually find our gate and after a short wait, load the flight to Beijing. The flight to Beijing is 4 and ½ hours. It’s raining when we arrive. Our taxi driver decided to take a “short cut” to beat some traffic issues. It didn’t really work out. We were on roads I’d never traveled before. The drive to the hotel took almost an hour. It’s usually half that.

At the desk, when we checked in, we picked up the two suitcases we had stored at the hotel when we left for Cambodia. I also had a package from BHSFIC. There was a faculty meeting held while I was traveling where they honored all the “leaving” teachers. Inside the package was a nice picture album the faculty and staff put together with some personal notes. I’ll be able to take a longer look later, but a quick scan through it already prompted fun memories. There was also a light Chinese style jacket.

We had thought we might be going out for dinner this last night in Beijing, but the rain put us out of the mood. The hotel upgraded us to a suite with access to the executive lounge. When we got hungry, we went to the lounge where they were serving a light dinner. Back in the room, we went to work organizing all our stuff with the additional suitcases, looking out on the wet city of Beijing.