Home Sweet Home

As some of you will have now realised... we are now HOME!!! Our six month adventure has finally come to an end and we arrived back in rainy England yesterday after a turbulent 12hr flight.

For our last week we were back in Thailand. We had four days on the lovely Ko Samet, which is the nearest island to Bangkok. Unfortunately the weather wasn't on our side... it rained quite a bit and we only managed about one day's proper sunbathing :o( Ko Samet is a Thai National Park, which means it's protected from any major building work and it's nature is conserved. The roads on the island are basically mudtracks, and as it was raining for most of our time here, these turned into total mud-slides, with massive puddles everywhere! The only way to get around the island was to hire out a dirt bike, put on some old clothes, and prepare to get muddy!! Me and Jon hired out these total monsters, really old bikes with massive dirt wheels, and we spent two days just exploring the island and getting dirty! It was a shame not to get much proper sun for our last week but we had loads of fun anyway so it didn't really matter :o)

We then travelled back to Bangkok for our last three days!! We'd booked into a fancy hotel in the middle of the shopping district.... oh what bliss it was to finally be in a bit of luxury!! Our room was small but perfect... we had a HUGE bathroom with a mirror that looked out onto the bedroom. We gave ourselves a good scrub, washed off six months of dirt and then headed out for some retail therapy!
The first thing on my agenda was to get a proper haircut. Unfortunately they don't have any Toni and Guy's in Cambodia etc so I'd let my hair grow long and the colour had started to fade. Thankfully Bangkok had a decent hairdresser's (Essensuals) so I booked myself straight in there and pleaded with them to do something with my unruly mop. Fast forward two hours and I was feeling like a new woman and ready to shop! Me and Jon blitzed one shopping centre, then watched the new Spiderman 3 in a huge cinema and ate chicken and chips! Perfect evening :o)

The next day we went to Siam Square, which is the biggest shopping centre in Asia. It's basically like three massive Bluewaters all in one, they have every kind of shop you can think of there, from super designer boutiques (Chanel, Gucci, Prada etc), to cheaper, Western names (Zara, Mango, Diesel etc), to really cool Asian designers (me and Jon bought loads of really cool one off creations - so cheap too!).
We'd booked a meal in a super swish restaurant that evening - Vertigo. It's on the 61st floor of a five star hotel in Bangkok! I'm not the biggest fan of heights and was panicking a bit about going up there, but once you reach the top the views are that amazing that it takes away any fear you have. We had the perfect table looking out onto the Bangkok skyline, and thankfully the weather was warm without much of a breeze so everything went well for us. We both ordered a HUGE steak (mine was like a brick) and a lovely bottle of wine. It really was the perfect way to end our travels. It cost probably more than we spent in a month in Laos but was worth every penny :o)

One day left in Thailand, and we spent it doing more shopping, and getting the last of our Thai massages. Finally made it to the airport on Monday evening and done more shopping before catching our flight back to Britain. We both felt a bit down about returning... it feels quite hard to leave Asia after spending so long there. I certainly will miss the crazy ways of Asia life, the warm weather, the beautiful scenery and the friendly people. It's scary to think we will be job and house hunting when we get back!! I'm certainly not looking forward to doing loads of interviews!

The flight was quite turbulent and we didn't get a great sleep, but the views flying in over London were amazing. It cheered us up to see the London Eye, Tower Bridge and Big Ben as we approached Heathrow. We've missed it!!

It was great seeing my Mum again when we landed. I've certainly missed her Sunday Roasts... infact she even made a Tuesday Roast for us specially last night... bliss!

Can't wait to see everyone again, we've missed all our friends so much, luckily we have a great summer to look forward to so it won't be too hard on us coming back. Besides, we need to be back home to start earning money to pay for our next trip! :o)