We arrived back in England early on the 14th March to find that nothing's changed and everything's changed. It's all a bit weird. The roads and shops and my house look and smell exactly the same but my lovely Grandad passed away late last year (RIP Grandad, Love You xx), my beautiful Goddaughter has doubled in age and size and now has a full head of curls, and - scariest of all - my little sister is driving. I swear last time I checked my sister was only about 8 but it turns out she's almost 18. This makes me feel very old.

So our 13 hour flight left Bangkok around midnight on the 13th and arrived in London just before 6am on the 14th. We managed to get five or six hours of cramped sleep in so it was almost as if we'd just gone to bed and woken up in the morning as usual, albeit on a different continent. It was lucky we weren't too jet-lagged, as no-one was at the airport to greet us when we got there. I started to worry that my parents had been in a car accident or that something awful had happened but when I got through to them it turned out they'd 'just overslept' and were running about an hour late. I know what you're thinking: their first born child returns after 9 months of globetrotting and they are able to oversleep?? What kind of callous uncaring people are they?? Perhaps this kind of treatment is why their daughter left the country in the first place! But when I got home I found that they had put up welcome-home-banners and balloons all around my room, and since then I have been treated to lovely lunches out and fed lots of Honey Loops (for the uninformed, a big bowl of Honey Loops has been my breakfast of choice for the last twenty years) so I suppose I can forgive their not wanting to get up at 5am :-)

We've been so busy catching up with people that our travels already feel like a distant memory. Swimming with wild dolphins, diving in the Great Barrier Reef, hiking an ice glacier, Jak jumping out of a plane, camping in the Australian outback, watching the sun rise over Angkor Wat, snorkelling in Fiji - did we really do all of that?? We must have done because we have the photos to prove it but I still have to keep pinching myself when I look at them. The whole trip was beyond amazing. I am sure we will get asked the same questions about it again and again over the next couple of weeks so I have tried to pre-empt some of them here:

Favourite country: New Zealand - it's so beautiful!

Favourite experience: Camping under the stars in the Aussie outback and snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef (me - I can have two right?) and skydiving over Lake Taupo (Jak)

Worst experience: My epic hangover on Mana Island, Fiji. I genuinely thought I might die.

Cost: Ooh, lots - thousands and thousands. But worth every penny.

Most expensive country: Australia, hands down. If you are going there prepare to eat lots of toast.

Did we get on?: Yes, most of the time, although I'm not going to pretend that spending 24/7 with one person for months on end is always easy. For example, Jak no longer believes that girls poo flowers. This doesn't seem to have affected our relationship too adversely.

Homesickness?: A little, especially leading up to Christmas.

Things we will miss: the freedom and lack of Monday mornings, the amazing sights, all the fantastic people we met.

Things we won't miss: rock-hard beds, squat toilets, being 'Bus w***ers'.

Longest bus/train journey: 24 hours (Koh Phangan to Bangkok)

And our plans for the future? Jobhunting, getting used to the cold weather again, eating lots of scrummy English comfort food, saving up for a house/wedding and spending time with our family and friends - but not necessarily in that order. Oh and we have booked our next holiday, to Cyprus in October. Something to look forward to when England feels too grey...