Day 91 - Final entry, time to come home :(

Well following my last post, after completing my last dive day, I went straight from the internet café to a party at the dive centre - it was Evylene's dive-master graduation (the sister of Christophe, our dive instructor). I met up with Alex and Dave and we started to enjoy a few beers and barbecue seafood. Later came Evylene's initiation - a snorkel with a upside-down bottle attached to the end, into which they poured a bucket of Samsung (local moonshine-style whiskey/rum out here). She managed to get through the whole bucket, and following a bow to applause she made a bit of a mess in the fish pond behind her :)

Later all were pretty drunk, and everyone at the party ended up getting chucked into the diving pool fully clothed (myself included) by this beefcake dive master. Then onto the late-night bar afterwards for some more drinking and (watching other people) dancing. A said goodbye to Alex and Dave sometime in the early hours. A few more hours later and I was up to frantically pack, and start my journey to Bangkok. I felt awful! To make matters worse I had to stop the group taxi (that gets you to the ferry) and jump out 400m down the road as I realised I left my passport with the guesthouse. A sweaty fast-paced walk back to collect it, and a fortuitous bumping into a diver instructor from another dive school, allowed me to hitch a lift back to the ferry, which I made with time to spare. Following that, a bus ride which I slept pretty much the whole way through ending up in central Bangkok late afternoon.

Didn't do much there except go for a walk around the local area the first night, eat, then catch up on some much needed sleep, by which time my taxi arrived to take me the the airport for my flight to Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, to meet the boys and get our return flight home.

My impression of Bangkok is limited by the minuscule amount of it I experienced, but it doesn't seem as bad as many made it out to be. The mishmash of architecture I observed on the final leg of the journey in was pretty fascinating, massive high-tech skyscrapers and luxury accommodation next to shanty towns over a stagnant pond. Massive investment in infrastructure with spaghetti junction style highways suspended 30m in the air on giant concrete pillars plunging the streets below into perpetual darkness. A bustling atmosphere that (where I was anyway) seemed more tame than I was expecting. Somewhere I'll have to return to another time (Thailand is a big place, and will have to wait for another adventure) to experience it properly. The airport in Bangkok was the best I've been in!

Bangkok at night, showing the crazy road systems flying through the air

Image source; flickr

The journey went like custard (sweet and smooth), and by the evening I was back in the centre of Saigon (HCM), and found the hotel and room Lukas was staying in. Went for some drinks with him, and Peter soon joined us for a good catch up on what we'd all been doing of he past week. Being our last night we made it a big one – had some nice seafood, and drank quite a bit, got a nice hangover to sleep off on the plane journey home. Have just done some last-minute shopping, going back to do a final pack, then get our taxi to the airport. It's 2 flights that take about 18 hours, but loosing 7 hours in time difference put me back in the UK tomorrow morning, and home for lunch. Final visual-journey update for Cambodia & Thailand.

Thailand was a much more developed country than the others, followed by Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos was undoubtedly the poorest, least developed. Every country was unique, and good for different reasons. I can't say I enjoyed one more than the others, as we did very different things in each. All were great, and I'd happily return to every one. Parts of northern-Laos we didn't get to explore I'd love to visit, and the rest of Thailand too. But all this and more will have to wait for another time.

It's been a fantastic journey. Have experienced some truly amazing things, and been some countless places that have blown me away. Have used 6 motorbikes and 3 push-bikes, ridden in over 20 coaches, in 4 different countries, where I've travelled (somewhere in the region of) 10,000km must have seen over 100 cities, town and villages. Have been burnt in blistering high temperatures, soaked in tropical rain storms, and been freezing cold - wearing as many layers as I could fit. Been in several different sea's, couple of lakes, countless rivers, and just one swimming pool :)

90 days/3 months, talking to people back home, seems to have flown by for many, but for me, the experience has helped make it feel like an eternity – doing something different and exciting every single day sure beats the daily repetition of life back home. I can hardly remember what it's like to live my life, and am looking forward to experiencing that weird unfamiliar sensation you get reintegrating back into your everyday routine. But my eyes have been opened further than I ever thought possible, and they'll never close the same way again.

Thanks to all those who communicated with me out here, and to all who have been reading and commenting on the blog as we've been going. I've enjoyed writing it, and will be archiving it somewhere as a personal diary (I'll correct the spelling and bad grammar ;), for those who who didn't get a chance to read it all – sorry I wrote so much.

If you're interested to know what you've been a part of, the web stats are; 350 unique visitors made over 1000 visits, with 2,500 page views. All from 33 different countries around the world and over 50 cities in the UK alone, with 14% of you lovely people using Macs :).

Thanks again for listening, and looking forward to seeing you all as soon as possible.

Lukas is writing his final entry right now to, and if there's time he may even upload his final set of images from roaming the street of Ho Chi Ming city, in which case they'll be in the usual place.