So here I am once more, in the land of Oz, good to see most things are as I left them. Great to see the land is a little bit greener. The trip has come to an end and I feel all strange about that. I am very happy to once more have so many amazing food to choose from, I got all overwhelmed in a supermarket yesterday.

Highlights

Burning Man, Wayne Beef 'n' Ale, Laos, Haad Thian, new friends, European cheese, Sintra, Dead Kennedys at CBGBs, Amsterdam birthday bash, The Himalayas. starry nights in the desert, full moon over Cloth square, the night Utopia expolded, Half Moon Party, Sprakly Eiffel Tower, drunken adventures.

Lowlights

Losing my shoes repeatedly, poverty, Indian trains, airplane food, camera theft, food poisoning, sexual harrasment, bed bugs (and associated allergic reaction), Thai mushrooms, mosquitoes, vaccinations, long bus and train rides, my carbon load.

In summary I spent 9 months away, 161 hours on trains (that is 5 hours shy of a week), 129 hours on buses,  54 hours on planes,  67 hours in cars, I read 59 books (totally over reading now) and made hundreds of friends. No wonder I am tired

I learnt that my skin looks mazing when I am in the desert, that shoes come and go freely, that I am insane and gegarious and a social butterfly. I love travelling and cannot wait to go off and do some more. 

So desperately seeking wealthy sponsor who would like to pay me travel and buy me a stills camera ad a video camera, please.

If you are going to spend 14 hours at an airport, try and make it Changi Airport Singapore, this place is amazing. So far I have enjoyed free internet services, had a much needed nap, had a free tour of the city, enjoyed the rainforest garden, the cactus graden and the Sunflower Garden, watched some tv, had a free foot massage and now I am off to see a movie, phew. Warning, if you do decide to hang out here bring warm clothes, it is freezing in here. It is 35 degrees outside and about 15 in here, I would eat a baby bunny for some socks and a pair of pants.

My last night of travelling was a blast, after breaking the tuk tuk Sam and I stayed up all night drinking and wandering Koh San Road trying to convince people to come to our ping pong show rather then going to theirs. We caused trouble, visited a brothel, ran back into the 8 Irish lads we met in Vang Vieng (not called Scaries apparently Skerries is a place in Ireland, who would have thunk it?) and generally made the most of a touristy smelly little pit that is Bangkok.

I have now missed 2 nights sleep and my plane leaves from here at midnight, so I will be back bug eyed, tired and probably smelly, tomorrow - panicking noises and much choking.

I really want the following things; cheese (especially haloumi), pide, turkish toast with vegemite, roasted pumpkin, soy sausages, not bacon, Newtown Cafe breakfasts, mayonnaise, Torinos pizza, pine nuts, muesli, kiwi friut, oh I should not have started this there are far too many things, soon enough.

So I am in Bgangkok for 24 hours. I arrived at 4:30 this morning which sucked a lot. Thankfully Sam (Leichhardt boy I met in Vang Vieng) was on the same bus, so there were 2 disgruntled, tired, messy people to deal with the situation.

This morning after waking up from our stupidly expensive hotel room we set off for food and adventure. Little did we know how much adventure we would have...

Bangkok Tuk Tuk drivers offer you these stupidly cheap tours of the city, then take you places where you get ripped off and they get commission, being wise to their ways we decided to go have a look at some sights and not buy anything at all.....

2 minutes after we got in Sam persauded the driver to pull a wheelie, which he did, a massive wheelie. The tuk tuk came crashing back down to earth so hard the front wheel broke off completely, the suspension split in two and steering fluid spewed everywhere. This caused much laughter and pointing from the Thai onlookers.

The tuk tuk driver dragged the tuk tuk to one side (single lane road) called his mate and we jumped into a new tuk tuk, which we ran away from as soon as we got to the big Buddha (I have seen bigger). We are now hiding from the tuk tuk mafia, well actually more like sitting in air conditioning hiding from the relentless heat, odours, hawkers and humidity of Koh San Road....

So despite being less then 48 hours from home, the laughter and craziness continues... One more sleep, and night on a plane and I am back.... Gulp.

The thought of going home is scary, exciting, depressing, weird and fearful.... I am sitting in Vientaine, Laos contemplating my return and killing time until my bus to Bangkok.

I know yesterday I said there was no point in writing since no one is reading this, that may have been unfair, I am not sure, but I have come to rely on occassionaly venting, ranting, anecdoting (is that a word?), story telling to the unseen internet masses. I may have terrible punctuation and no time for editing, yet I love to write, to wax lyrical and use stupid words like defenestration.

Immodium is the travelers best friend. Once again tonight it will be keeping me safe (and dry) through an overnight bus journey across the border into Thailand (again!). Valium is the second best friend, this is debateable, but immodium whilst being less commonly called upon, is more essential when required. Diazepan is just wonderful for reducing the impact of those long haul trips. A costume is another essential for any long trip, you never know when you will want a pair of cat ears or a fabulous outfit.

Yesterday sucked a lot. Claire and I parted company, I am very sad and extermely jealous, I did consider prostitution as a way of continuing our adventures, but I appear to have broken my finger, and without that finger all of my appeal has gone.... I did also consider the potential employment opportunities my extreme double jointedness presents, but it just led back to whoring.

I also said goodbye to the 14 (?) people we had been hanging out with in Vang Vieng, a very cool crew of people who are all going off to Don Det together, once again sad and jealous.

So here I am. Alone again and on my stupidly long oddessey homeward. In 4 days, 3 buses, 2 planes and 4 countries I will once again return to Australia, be kind; I am feeling kind of fragile. Be patient, I am feeling kind of isolated, be there; I am feeling neglected.

I am another pair of shoes down.... My $4 fake Birkenstocks bit the dust. How many pairs of shoes now you ask? Well; Blundstones, Boots, Crocs, Sandals, Fake Birkenstocks and that is all so far...

I am home in 4 days, do not be suprised if I am shoeless. It is appropriate really as I will be homeless, unemployed, shoeless, bedless and most likely listless.

So there may be another post from Bangkok, but I doubt since I am pretty sure that only people sharing my DNA are actually reading this and since I am in email contact with them, I am just talking to myself here.

Tubing on the Mekong in Vang Vieng is without a doubt one of the coolest things I have done on this trip. I mean lying in a rubber inner tyre floating from bar to bar, drinking free shots of Lao Lao rice whiskey, having buckets of booze, jumping off platforms into the river and hanging out with an awesome crew of people, what more could you want? The only answer to that is to not have to leave...

I went tubing on St Paddy's Day which was spectacular, I had an absolute blast, partied hard with some Irish and a lot of other nationalities, loved every second of it. Not so fun the next day, but you get that on thses big missions. I also went tubing yesterday and the day before that, lovely. Yesterday I just had a happy shake and floated down the whole length of the tubing run, really beautiful, so much fun.

I broke up the tubing with a day down at Blue Lagoon which is really special and really blue. There is an amazing limestone cave there full of stalactites and stalacmites, no lights so it is pitch black, no safety rails, really cool.

Laos is officially my favourite country so far, it is so beautiful here. Vang Vieng has these enormous limestone mountains that serve as a background for lush green forests, with the mighty Mekong roaring through valleys. There are fireflys at night and geckos everywhere. The bugs are all massive and there is a very scared Englishman who does not like extremely large spiders. 

So I will be back in 5 days and that is making me sad. Ciao Ciao

So my last post kinda sucked a lot, sorry. This blog has this habit of formatting halfway through a post, and it messes it all up and I am too lazy to figure out what has happened, so I give up and leave you all wondering where I am and what I am doing, or not.

So after the dodgiest border crossing ever from Cambodia into Laos - it included leaving Cambodia and then walking 250 metres to enter Laos, where that put us exactly is anyone's guess, maybe international waters? I have found a reference to the border crossing to Laos in the Australian Department of Foriegn Affiars, it describes the border as "an isolated outpost", and that was the big border, we went to the shack border down the road used by smugglers, it is miles from anything and consists of a rope on a string (literally) and some angry dudes in a hut.

10 hours, 2 boats (one with large anrgy pig onbaord), 2 mini vans and a ute later  and against all odds we finally made it to Si Phan Don (4000 islands) on the Mekong. We stayed on don Det a sleepy little island with no phones, no electricity and an unfathomable number of bugs, my best protein source for months.

After a week of hanging out on the island meeting some extremely cool people, tubing, lying around, swimming, drinking and eating pumpkin burgers, we tore ourselves away from the best lifestyle ever and made the mission to Pakse. The mission to Pakse included a ute with 38 people and a chicken on it and some serious sunburn for Claire.

One of the reasons we went to Pakse was to replenish our funds, oops, big mistake. Somehow, despite having 6 bank accounts between us Claire and I could not get any money, long boring story that ends in tears. Claire sold her dong (oh that will never cease to be funny) to Ryan a lovely Canadian boy we met who is going to Vietnam where they have the funniest currency name in the world.

We are now in Ventiane, the second most boring capital city in the world; after Canberra (sorry Liz but it is true), from here we are planning to go up to Vang Vieng to go tubing down the Mekong, caving and other fun activites for Claire's birthday.

Oh yeah sorry lazy person here; we saw Irrawaddy river dolphins, they are extremely endangered and small, peered at them good and proper. We also went to the biggest waterfall in South East Asia, it was large, wet and made thunder noises. what else? Laos food sucks, especially if you are a vegetarian, oh and they are killnig all the chickens due to people dying of bird flu in Vientiane.

Very quickly because internet costs the same as accommodation and is unreliable... I am in Laos, it involved a ten hour journey, 4 hours of which was actually spent moving the rest of the time we sat around. I have some photos to post of the "border crossing" which is actually a shack in the bush, all very surreal and dodgy.

Staying on Don Det in Si Phan Don (4000 islands). It is beautiful and extremely chilled out, have managed to do exactly nothing and I am loving it. Hanging out talking shit with other falangs, smoking doobies, jumping into the Mekong from bars and generally lazing away the day are the activities scheduled for this

Ok now this site has done some stupid formatting thing and I cannot make it work so that is all folks. leg  

Latest location; Siam Reap somewhere in the hot, dusty, dry interior of Cambodia. Sweltering in the last few weeks before the wet season comes and revives the parched landscape. Sounds like the perfect weather to cycle 30 kilometres? You betcha bottom dollar it is!

After the hot, hot, hot and painful-bum inducing day of cycling yesterday, Claire and I woosed out today and got a tuk tuk around to look at some more amazing ancient ruins. It is amazing, thankfully we have a 3 day pass, 2 days in and we have not seen Angkor Wat yet, we are saving the best for last. What we have seen so far is truly spectacular. These are some seriously ancient, mind blowing structures they have here. All the ruins are based around man made resevoirs (I prefer to think of them as moats, but that may be the influence of too much dragon, castle, maiden fantasy novels as a child). Even though boat traffic is grinding to a halt on the Mekong at this time of year, the resevoirs are full and invitingly wet looking. Then again the puddle left by plant watering, which is full of frogs and other thirsty creatures, looks really inviting.

Latest news, I just gave blood and I have spectacular track marks and an allergic reaction to the bandaid and my arm won't stop bleeding.... But it will save some kiddies and the hospital staff were very impressed with my blood/ bleeding abilities.... And I got a free t-shirt and coconut cookies. Unfortunately for all, they really want B or AB blood and my A is not so needed, I ma sure they will find a use for it.

So in 2 days we begin our trek to Laos to hang on the 4000 islands, go tubing down a river of bars and go trekking with hill tribes. Tomorrow it is back on the bum bruising bicycle to gasp at Angkor Wat and gawk like the blown away traveller I am. Meanwhile; to sleep and dream about large moist bodies of wet stuff, and a pub of friendly faces.

Oh and I have not been able to use my hotmail account for a while so apologies to those who I have ignored!