Hey Peeps,

this is our final blog form Dubai. Em heads home tonight so the journey has ended :'( we are very sad but so grateful for the amazing times we've had.

After going back to bangkok after koh tao, we headed to a place 2 hrs bus ride from bangkok called Kanchanaburi, near the Burma border. It was a very sleepy town where not much happens but it was a great place to soak up a little bit more culture and history before heading to Dubai.

First on the agenda was one of the reasons Em wanted to go to thailand in the first place.....Tiger Temple! We went to a lovely and very large tiger sanctuary that is run by a group of monks and international volunteers. it was an amazing feeling to lie next to fully grown tigers! As Tigers are more active at night, they sleep during the day so they were very lazy and loved to be petted. We got some great photos and some pants photos (sand was flying everywhere!) which we will upload as soon as we can. There were a few tiger cubs in there we got to play with too but we ran out of time for a cuddle :)

At the end of the day, they come and feed the wild animals who live at the park. They bring truck loads of pumpkins up and smash them in the street for the pigs, ponies, peacocks and buffalos. We saw one guy get bucked up the bum by a hungry buffalo and distracted with laughter, we didnt see the pony's rear end backing up to mark!!........jumped out the way just in time or that would have been really painful!!

Another day here, we hired mary poppins type push bikes with baskets! We went all around the old town hunting to put together the story of the death railway. The short of the story is the during the 2nd world war, the japanese used hundreds of thousands of PoWs to build a railway to link burma and thailand with japan and the torture and slave labour caused thousands of deaths. Some of the railway is still there and there are massive memorial gardens and interesting museums.

The third and final day was spend on a moped heading to a place Zoe recommended to us - Erawan Falls in the Erawan National Park. Its a very scenic route out to the park and we nearly ran out of petrol again (we r good at that!). We got there and its sooo worth the drive; 7 tiers of the most beatiful waterfall you will ever see! We hiked the 2000m to the top and when we got to the top we found a beautiful family of wild monkeys and they came really close!! Could have touched them but wanted to keep our fingers so resisted! After climbing aaaall the way back down we went for w lovely refreshing dip in one of the FREEZING pools. Nice as it was, we couldnt stay in there forever coz we were being bitten every 10 seconds by the big fish who didnt like us swimming in their house!

The rest is history, as they say. We headed back to bangkok, went for our fitting for clothes, realised the flight was THAT night not the folllowing night, carried our stuff around all day, went to a night market, went to the airport, wrapped our bursting bags in cling film! and headed to Dubai, where we have been the past week.

Em heads home tonight while Mark is staying until the 23rd. This is our final blog so thanks for reading!! We still have loads of pix to upload so u will still get alerts. Look forward to seeing u all, keep the messages coming! But for now, we are signing off....

Take care,

Mark and Em

x x x