Finally, after months of planning, travelling, excitement and adventures the trip is finally over. The cheering crowds waving their gaily coloured banners and thronging the crash barriers at Heathrow were kept at bay long enough for us to slip back into the country and tackle the mountain of exciting Readers Digest offers awaiting us. It appears we have just missed out on the deadline for winning a complete set of illustrated books on the bird life of western Sco...

Tick, tock. omg. Time is running out. Less than 2 weeks to go and the list we started with weeks ago seems even longer than it was then. Every time I cross something off two more things appear, how does that happen? There must be a phrase that describes it isn't there? Answers on a postcard, or three, please. What happened? My beach body remains unhoned, the culture has fallen by the wayside - the only thing I seem to be moderately successful at is arrang...

Stardate end of August (alright, beginning of September you pedants). Bri has finished work to concentrate on sorting through his mountain of clothes in order to select the 55 most precious t-shirts that must accompany us on our travels. That and read copious volumes of medical dictionaries so that we can be taking the most up to date malaria prophylactics known to man. I appear to have made a classic schoolgirl error in going for the elephant sized economy ta...

D-Day minus 47. It's cold, wet and raining. Our trip was planned as an 'endless summer'. Ha. At this rate it will be 7 months of wearing raincoats and drying socks over hotel radiators. This week's Big Debate is over malaria protection. Brian is considering all the options. Meanwhile mosquitos throughout Asia are licking their lips and sharpening their tiny knives and forks .....