From leaving home on the 5th of March, it's been almost exactly 5 months i've been away. In that time I think (tried to count) I've only been completely by myself for about 5 days in total. Yesterday, however, I said goodbye to my last SEAsian travel buddies. Spencer left Me, Ben and Sam in Siem Reap as he made his way into Laos, and yesterday, after I'd shown them around Bangkok for a couple of days, Ben and Sam began their Thailand trip with a long night bus journey up to Chiang Mai. So - Beno is all alone :D Not for long tho - met up with Finn WT and Jack Bowd today! - but they'e gone home now... But yeah... pretty much on my own :P

Siem Reap was just as class as all the other places. It was bursting with tourists and a surprising amount of family holidayers. The nightlife was CHARGED and the food was brilliantly cheap. And there were really good bakeries too! Sweet as a pancake. :D

We took a day to recoup after s***ty cramped travels... and then organised our Tuk Tuk man for our three-day temple mission. Originally I'd wanted to do the temples by bike, cycling to each of the different temples etc, but once we were in the grounds, I realised that actually a Tuk Tuk man driving us everywhere was a muuuuch better idea - they were all like 5 or more km from each other and everyday we'd get back in the dark so - we wouoldnt have seen nearly as much. The driver also acted a little bit as our history guide - His english was really good... except when he was talking about the temples. :P! no joke - We could barely understand a word so we'd just nod along politely... and leave to look at the temples - "So what's this one call-" "No idea mate" :P We learned most from our Cambodia book as we walked round.

The temples were mind boggling! We did them in chronological order apart from the last day where we saw the three biggest and most famous ones. My favourite out of all that we saw was 'Bayon' a buddhist temple built by Ramahanamanawoiugrfoiqbeg in AD0000.1. It was strange - every wall in every direction has face of buddha looking out with his classic "I'm The Boss" smile. A lot of the temples had been overgrown where trees had grown in aoungst the rubble with their roots entwined in the crumbling walls. It's so hard to describe the experience - it was 3 days of seeing some truly incredible architechture that has been there for over a millenium.

In the end... after having one break day before the last day, time caught up to Ben and Sam and we booked our bus to Bangkok. We said our sad goodbyes to Spence and left the next morning - slightly concerned about Ben because he'd got a skin reaction to something which had come up in nastly rashes and had been put on an IV drip. We got him to Bangkok where the medical service is top notch and he's all sorted now.

So - yes... I'm back in big BKK - SEA central. I showed Ben and Sam around Bangkok and introduced them to Thai shizzle :D - the sort cuts, free internet cafe's and the best padthai around. Thankfully, on our girly day out buying stuff from shops, I took them to the Chatuchack weekend market (the biggest market in SEA) and had an awesome 4 hours buys looooaads of stuff and only seeing about 1/8th. (Lu...yes CUZ... this place is your mecca - To Anyone who goes with her to Thailand and to this market beware - You WILL NOT find her for a week) And then we all did something that I had missed out doing before - PING PONG SHOW!! :D It's a must - right of passage in Bangkok. Ha! One of the most incredible and disgusting things i've ever seen... I'm not gunna type out the details... that just feels weird.. It'll have to be explained in person... :P But after the show had finished - about 3am... we made our way back to our part of town... at which point me and Ben decided that - as it was our last night together, we should go crash our last hotel and stay up for a Bangkok skyline sunrise. So - we picked a lush looking 4 star hotel... bought two chocolate milks, a twix each and infiltrated our way to the roof of the hotel :D Dangled out legs of the roofand chatted about al the wicked stuff we'd done and seen. At 6pm that day (I didn't sleep) Ben and Sam departed up to Chiang Mai. :( Ever since I've been analysing my East Coast Australia book - I'm Psyched!! there's sooooo much to see and do in 1 month - I hope I can achieve it all.

So - All I have to do now is get to Singapore by the 8th of August, when my flight leaves for Melbourne! First part of the journey is today - my train sleeper train leaves for Butterworth, Malaysia at 2:45pm - from there I will have to sort it out myself... fingers crossed!

ONLY 1 MONTH TILL I'M HOME!!! :S