For our last night

Dancer at the Salathip Restaurant
Originally uploaded by richardinsale

we went to our favourite restaurant - The Salathip at the Shangri La Hotel. The restaurant is in the hotel gardens and is in a series of teak houses right down by the river. We always pick a table next to the river so we can see the city's skyline and illuminated boats on the river itself. You most definitely know that you're in the orient when you look out at Bangkok's river and see the boats with their gold and funny little oriental roofs (see the pictures of the Wats in Luang Prabang for an idea of what the roofs of the boats look like!). But just in case you are in any doubt, there are beautiful dancers and a live orchestra (local wooden xylaphone and metal tingaling drums) all evening. Magical.
So this was our last evening of the holiday , in fact, 3 hours after this photo was taken, we were on our way to the airport in a taxi.
We got home safely and strangely enough, the weather has been quite sunny (not the same bright sun of the far east or its radiant warmth) although cold. The coldest temperature we had experienced since we went away was about 18C in the mountains at Vang Vieng, but here in Manchester, it was about 5C on arrival!
The warmest temperature we experienced was probably around 40C for much of our stay in Cambodia and Vietnam - phew!

Thanks for reading - I'll add a further entry as a retrospective in a few days once the dust has settled, but just to let you know that we are well, haven't run out of money and the house is fine. Many thanks to our wonderful neighbours (Diana and Mike) and to Charlie's sister (Jenny) for looking after the home in our absence!