So I'm home! It's been five days and already the whole four months seems like some weird dream. It sort of felt like that while I was there really though, like I was just watching someone else jump out of airplanes, swim alongside manta rays and ride motorbikes into Vietnamese sunsets. Since being home I've gone straight back into lazy mode, I miss having amazing things just happen with no work on my part, now I actually have to put effort into having a life again, tough times! On the other hand I get to sleep in my own bed (even if I'm still jetlagged after 5 days and wake up at 6am every morning) and eat my own weight in Marks & Spencer snacks so I'm just about coping!

My last few days in Queenstown were awesome. The day after Milford we mainly just wandered around town all day taking nice arty group photos next to the lake with the pretty snowy mountains in the background. We went up the gondola to see the sunset, but as with every single time I've gone out of my way to see a sunset or sunrise, there just wasn't one. The sky was too clear this time, for God's sake! Today the sunset over Anglesey was better than any of the ones I'd seen travelling though (bright pink sky!) so I'll just paste that into all my photos or something! That evening we went to the ice bar, where everything is made out of ice including the glasses and lots of sculptures of bears and penguins. I could have stayed in there for ages pretending to lick the furniture but it was pretty cold so maybe not. I got talking to this Aussie couple who after two minutes bought me very expensive shots to drink down the ice luge and invited me skiing with them, people are so nice! We went on to the World bar again and drank a load more teapots and I met up with some guys I'd met the other night and went to a dnb bar that didn't play dnb but played pretty good reggae so that was a nice change from the s*** music everywhere else!

Next day we didn't do much again, we were gonna go play crazy golf but for some reason we didn't get round to it, just ate a really spicy fergburger instead and sorted out some skiing action for the next day. Everyone was pretty shattered and half the group left on the bus that morning so it felt a lot emptier! I went out that evening with the guys and went to the reggae bar again cos I'm a trooper.

Next day was our last day in Queenstown and we thought we'd finish it off in style with some skiing. None of us had winter sports cover and I was very aware of the fact that of all the things I'd done this was the one I was most likely to hurt myself doing so I took it pretty easy, no blacks or anything crazy like that! Half the group had never skiied so they got some lessons from Renee who used to be an instructor and half the group were pros so wanted to do the dangerous stuff. That left me somewhere in the middle so I just floated down the mid range slopes all day catching up with everyone at the bottom. I forgot how much I actually love skiing, last time I went I had to catch up with people who were ten times better than me but this time I just chilled out a bit, lovely.

For our last night we decided to avoid World Bar cos it was always packed and went to a place where they set fire to the bar every two minutes followed by another ridiculously packed bar playing crappy music. It was our last night as a bus so I was intending to stick around this time but I accidentally lost them and ended up back at the reggae bar with the other guys again, oops. This time they were actually playing drum and bass so that was good. Oh well, we had plenty of fun bus times along the way! I had an awesome last night anyway, before finally having to say goodbye to Queenstown, definitely one for the favourites list! I wanted to get one last Ferg before I left but I suppose a breakfast burger would be a bit over the top. I miss the Ferg.

We had a 8 hour bus journey up to Christchurch where everyone slept the whole way. The scenery was pretty cool actually with these rugged yellow hills and bright turquoise rivers (dunno why everything's turquoise over here!) but everyone was too tired to care! There were only a few of us staying in Christchurch since the earthquake last year means that there's pretty much nothing left. I was quite interested to see what it looked like since from the descriptions I was just expecting a city of rubble but it all looked pretty normal. I didn't make it over to the red zone though since it was pouring rain and I didn't know the way.

To keep things interesting I decided to stay in prison that night. Or an old jailhouse converted into a hostel.... but it was still cool! They kept all the details like the clanging doors and the bars, and all the staff were called wardens and all sorts of other quirky little details. I love me a good novelty building! I was going to spend my last night writing some very last minute postcards and sorting my stuff out but instead ended up having very geeky conversation with some guy about books and sci-fi for hours instead, he was writing his own book about the end of the world, I'm definitely gonna get me a signed copy!

And that was that. The next morning I caught my bus to the airport where Renee was getting the same flight to Sydney so we entertained ourselves buying crap in the airport to waste the rest of our dollars before waving goodbye to New Zealand forever (probably). I was sat next to a very annoying lady with a really high pitched voice who kept wanting to get up for the first twenty hours of the flight so that was fun. It was thirty hours overall and I had a pretty good sleep between Bangkok and Dubai and spent the rest of the time watching about seven films, not too shabby. Made the rookie mistake of picking a load of soppy romances so that I was an emotional wreck, always awkward on a plane! Finally touched down in Manchester to scorching sunshine and a very overexcited grandma, happy to be home!

I did some sunbathing once I got home and actually managed to get a pretty decent tan from it, who needs to go abroad eh! I also had an amazing Sunday dinner, I'd been craving it for four months and it definitely didn't disappoint! Since then I've seen some friends and been out for some meals but generally spent all day mooching around. Which is what I was looking forward to doing but now that it's been almost a week the post-travelling blues are starting to set in and I'm having to accept the fact that probably the best year of my life is over. Sob.

So yeah, it's been amazing. I'd do it all over again tomorrow if I could, with quite a few major changes like cutting out most of the tours and spending waaay more time in Asia and less in Oz and NZ, they were a bit too normal for my liking! But I've encountered a whole load of weird and wonderful people, places, foods, sights, animals, bus drivers, etc etc., and hopefully one day after the four year PhD of doom is over I can do a bit more and go back to the places I missed (but probably in a slightly maturer fashion with less drunken messiness, maybe). I'm glad I went on my own cos I wouldn't have met nearly as many people otherwise but I'm a bit depressed about the fact that I'm not going to have anyone to reminisce with now that I'm home. I'm just gonna be one of those gap yah t*** starting all my sentences with 'oh yeah when I was in SE Asia...', and nobody likes those. Gonna slightly miss having a blog of all my trivial day to day activities too, it's been fun actually remembering what I do for once, even though I'm fairly certain only my Dad's been reading them :)

Anyway, that's enough rambling, it's been emotional, byyyyyyeeeeeee travelling! Hello real life.