Days 77 and 78, in which we go home

After breakfast in our room and a spot of pottering, we left The Quay at 1pm and didn't stop travelling until we arrived home 25 hours later. This was in part due to a massive margin of error we'd been given for our transfer at Bangkok, allowing a total of eight hours to go from one plane to the next. We were kicking ourselves at our extreme risk aversion until we realised, ultimately, that if we'd gone for anything less we wouldn't have made it as our flight out of Phnom Penh was delayed by several hours, and then once at Bangkok we had to go through the lengthy immigration process just to get out to pick up our suitcases, then back through the seperate and lengthy check-in, security and immigration processes again to catch our flight to London.

We'd grown manic about Cambodian food hygiene after I suffered seven straight days of major tummy upset from my mango salad in Siem Reap. After that, I didn't tolerate salad on the side of my plate, ice in my drinks or even cutlery which might have been sitting on the table since the night before. In Bangkok airport we loosened the leash a little and tucked into chicken satay and a giant sushi platter, washed down with white wine, and finally knew we were on the way back to normality.

The flight home seemed to go quite quickly, and we soon found ourselves motoring through the streets of London. It was wonderful to come home and realise how beautiful London is: the buildings are largely fabulous, Regent's Park was sheathed in a low mist and there wasn't an ounce of litter on the streets. It felt great to be back. It may be thirty eight degrees colder here, but I can definitely live with that if it means living in such a superb city. In this sense the holiday was very well planned, as I doubt I would be so sanguine about my return if we were coming straight from the glories of New Zealand.

Entering our flat felt like seeing it for the first time, and we went from room to room cooing like we were viewing it on the market. As a child I called this the Carpet Effect - whenever we got home from holiday, I was always shocked by how gaudy the living room carpet seemed - but today the Carpet Effect was entirely positive. We couldn't believe how lovely everything seemed. "This kitchen is really nice," I enthused, running through the flat. "And the living room is so cozy." Things were helped by our A-class housitter, spimcoot, who'd cleaned the flat from top to bottom and stocked the fridge with welcome eggs, smoked salmon and prosecco. We need to go on holiday more often.

The afternoon was filled with opening mail and processing paperwork. Around 5pm I started to flag and fell asleep on the sofa. I've grown so used to waking up having no idea where I am, it took me literally 30 seconds to realise I was finally at home. "Those curtains look like the ones at home," I thought groggily, "but I'm thousands of miles away, so it can't be home." When I finally realised I was in London I felt quite dejected and it took a while to realise the Big Trip really hadn't all been a dream.