Whilst some people in the tour opted to fly to Bangkok for the last destination on our tour, most took the bus ride. Steve had another kidney pain attack and was flaked out on the back seat in agony. It was likely the first stop was going to be the hospital again. The consensus was that we should get over the border as fast as possible.

Once again, the border crossing was by foot. The bridge over the creek that separated the two countries was the most polluted we'd ever seen. It looked like a sewer and smelled ten times worse.

We sat waiting for admission across the border and Steve's pain started to ease somewhat. Whether this was another stone passing through is unknown but fortunately he was feeling a lot better.

The roads seemed very rough but Chenda later explained that we were travelling much faster than normal.

As we pulled into our hotel at Chinatown Bangkok, Freddy was waiting for us out the front. We got settled into our hotel room, had a much needed shower and went up to the rooftop bar. The pool was closed for maintenance but the views weren't.

We had dinner at local restaurant and of course Sue had to have Pad Thai in Thailand. It had a slightly smokey flavour and quite different than what we were used to. Steve had some stir fried veggies and crab patties that looked a bit like doughnuts. Even Sue liked them!

We returned to the hotel for a teary farewell as eveyone was leaving at different times the next day. The earliest departure was at around 3am but we didn't need to be at the airport until about 1pm. We had a cruisy start, grabbed an ice coffee across the road and basically waited for our ride. We ordered a Grab and we were on our way. Sue noticed that the speedo was hitting about 200kph at times so we made very good time to the airport.

Our flight boarded on time and although we had a last minute bathroom dash at the gate, managed to get into our seats for the short flight to Singapore, followed by the long haul to Brisbane the next morning.

It has taken us over a week to recover from the trip but we have very fond memories of our time away. Steve is still waking up through the night thinking we're in SE Asia somewhere 😁.

The one thing that always strikes us is no matter how the little things frustrate us in life, we still have it pretty good with an extremely high quality of life here in Australia. Yes, the cost of living is very high comparitively speaking, but so is the standard of living. Travelling and experiencing how other people live always humbles us and makes us realise how fortunate we really are.