Sunday. I woke up before the annoying bird today, that's when I knew I must have woke up too early. 5:30am. Bad times. I was thinking about my family, and couldn't seem to settle, just as I was dozing back off, the bird was cooing away so I was back up again. I started to do some packing trying not to wake Lauren up, but she's a deep sleeper so I was ok. I text my sister and agreed to all meet at 9:30am for breakfast. Breakfast in Thailand is usually toast and eggs, sometimes sausages (hot dog style) and the tea is usually Lipton, (which angers Lauren), although we have occasionally found English breakfast tea. Whilst we sat eating breakfast in the hostel, the owners cat jumped over the wall with a massive rat in its mouth. Myself and Lauren are not cat lovers at the best of times, so we both jumped up and Kirsty and Nick thought it was hilarious. Lauren left us about midday which was an emotional goodbye and she headed off to catch her flight to the Thai islands which is where we were going to be going next. Myself, Kirsty and Nick headed to find somewhere for Nick to get a massage and us girls to get our nails done. After a bit of a goose chase to find somewhere open on a Sunday, we found a Thai massage shop which we left Nick at (the sign in the window said, 'No Sex, Massage only')! Myself and Kirsty went to a hair and nail shop around the corner and paid 150 TBH (£3) to get an manicure and pedicure. It would cost about £30 at least at home so we were pleased with this. The standard of cleanliness and hygiene in Thailand is no where near the same as at home, and I do struggle to live with it sometimes. I braved looking at the toilet in the shop and they had a squat toilet which is common. It's a bowl about a foot off the ground shaped in a rectangle, and once you are finished you need to use a pan in the bucket of water next to it to fill up and flush down the 'toilet'. The floor is always wet from where they use a water gun to clean themselves instead of tissue, and there is always a gecko or a spider roaming around with a nest of ants. I decided to pass and we both waited until we could find a restaurant, which usually have a normal toilet at least, even if they aren't much cleaner. So once we finished with our nails we went to KFC round the corner with Nick and got some food (used their restrooms) and headed back to the hostel on a Tuk Tuk. We arranged for a taxi to come and pick us up and take us back to Bangkok airport, and it cost twice as much as it did to get here from Bangkok, but by this point we didn't care. We had a 90 minute drive back to Bangkok and checked in together. We sat in a pub in the airport and ordered onion rings, nachos and fries with cheese and called home to check how everything was going. Our flight took 6.5 hours to Dubai so we all watched 'The Holiday' together then fell asleep. It went quite quickly and once we landed in Dubai we had about half an hour to get to our connecting flight. It was so far away. We had to go through another security check, I got stopped AGAIN! I don't know if I mentioned earlier on but I was put in the body scanner at Birmingham airport coming out here. But anyway, I always get stopped for no reason, to the amusement of the others. They checked my bag, and almost confiscated my toothpaste but I managed to get it back. We had to take a few escalators and a tram to the gate (it's a big airport) and they were already shouting for Final call. Before we got on the plane to Birmingham, I got pulled by security in to a private room for them to swab me and my belongings, which even for me was a new one. I think they were testing for drugs. They checked the results were clear then let me go. When we got on the plane it was practically empty. I managed to lie down across four seats for the whole flight which I was really pleased about because I needed to sleep to try and sync my body clock back with UK time. I slept for a good few hours of the 7.5 hour flight and after what felt like a really long journey, we landed in Birmingham about 6:30am on Monday morning. Our Mum and Dad were both there to pick us up, and my Mum was so happy we were home. It was really emotional, and me and Kirsty both knew we had done the right thing coming back. All we need to do now is decide where and when our travel plans pick back up, but for now it's Family time X