There was never any doubt that there was a seat for me on the plane-i wish there had've been. i realised i'd made a mistake when i was sitting in the lounge at Bangkok airport.

Have just found all the nice free food and drink. :)))am thinking this might be another stupid decision and maybe we should've just gone and stayed in an expensive hotel...i read in a travel health book about the benefits of doing that...

OK. it's all gone a bit wrong. but here i am in the business lounge at Bangkok airport which has FREE internet access and is so v exciting and cheering me up. Also the fact that i am in the business class lounge becuase i'm waiting to see if my 'world traveller seat' is available as the world traveller section of the plane is overbooked and as i was the last person to book, i get to hang out here and wait to see what seat i have. Also obviously i'm totally lowering the tone of the lounge in my crumpled trousers and hoody, both with holes in them.

So yes, i'm going home. now it seems a bit of an over-reaction as i feel better than i have done in ages...

Basically i've made one million bad decisions and i've slept terribly since i've been in thailand and just haven't been able to get over anything. i've had this fevery headache thing for about three weeks now (altho i've had a couple of days when things have been better) which started just before the trek (which probably constitutes one of the worst decisions i've ever made altho, again, what made it worse was that i couldn't sleep on it) and last week i had a fever so bad i honestly thought i was going to die and was scared to go to sleep in case i didn't wake up.

Think also i stayed at you sabai too long thinking it was relaxing and i could get better there and while i did get better for about a day, i got sick again-my stomach was completely messed up (that was my fault as i just wasn't paying it the attention it deserved - forgetting how constipation is a serious problem for me). I'm not sure how these things are all linked but i guess they are. anyway i got complacent and over-confident when in reality i was shattered when i got to Thailand.

The reason i'm here now is that i can't sleep at all. i went to see a chinese doctor y'day and he said that my immune system was really, really weak and told me to do nothing but rest for three days but i couldn't, last night i just stressed and stressed. basically i've lost too much weight, have no energy and as the good doctor said, my immune system is shot - i just don't have the energy to fight any bugs should they try to attack me. also my stomach was proving really difficult to manage altho i did find some good meds in the pharmacy there and i've had enough of feeling headachy and dizzy.

Y'day i decided not to come home and i was thinking that that was a terrible decision (because today's ticket cost about 200pounds more although i'm less cross about this because if i don't get my allocated seat i get money back and also i'm getting these nice perks including rapid transit through passport control) because when i went to the travel agent to ask them for the next flight out it wasn't for a week and i panicked. I know you can get standby tickets but i didn't want the hassle as i had to fly down from Chiang Mai as well and obviously i am actually ill. also i don't have a credit card at the moment. (more me getting too stressed and not sorting out stuff properly)

Probably i should just be glad i'm not more ill -altho i have a flight to london to catch so i should probably keep quiet about that.

As i said to my sister when i thought i was dying. I don't regret going to Thailand. i'm really glad i went and i'm really glad i went on this trip-it's by far t he best thing i've ever done in my life and now all i have to do is tell the tale

Hello from this cool place called You Sabai . We came here last Monday for the cooking course -which lasted for three days -but i was ill and didn't do any cooking so we're still here. my chest was a bit bad (a nice doctor who was also doing the course gave me some oil of oregano which seemed to work really well) but really that fever thing i had came back and wouldn't shift. i'm feeling much better now though and am doing the cooking course this week instead.

this is a good place to rest though as you can just chill at the cafe (the cafe is really cool and provides a place to hang out for the peeps doing the earthen building course down the road or rather track(which is where i'm emailing from, i'm tempted to come back and do the course next year-earthen houses are so much better than normal houses-why do we all pay squillions of pounds for houses when we could build our own much cheaper and more sustainably?))

Or if you don't want to be sociable you can sleep in a bamboo hut all afternoon which captures the little breeze there is (as long as no one else is in it).

We're living in an earthen house which is pretty cool and yesterday i did our washing by stamping on it in a bucket which worked surprisingly well-the cleanest clothes i've had for ages.

We've met lots of nice people and been swimming in some nearby lakes. There are lots of rice paddies around you have to walk through them to get to the little village. so pretty cool and am feeling much better-physically and mentally. there are lots of spiritual books here so i'm trying to recapture my ki positiveness. currently i'm learning about water crystals and how they respond to words and pictures...

A belated hello from Thailand. I can't believe i've been here for ten days but there you go. time flies when u are having fun and/or stressing and/or not sleeping...yes it's still the same old me and i am completely doing my head in. why can't i be normal??? i want to be someone else again-i'm just annoying. as is this computer as lots of the keys don't work v well hence the even worse than normal grammar.

anyway i loved bangkok - i felt like i was michael palin and in a travel programme thus really travelling as asia is soooo different (with apologies to nz and australia). we were there for a couple of days before heading north to chiang mai. we got the overnight sleeper train and i had the best night sleep i've had here!

after one night, i went on a 24hr buddhist meditation retreat. i loved it at first and thought it was the best thing i've ever done in my life but the next morning we had to get up at 5am and i was too tired to concentrate on the meditation. when i got back to where we were staying at about 2pm i rested and then fell asleep abou 5pm - i then slept for the net 24hours as i had a bit of a fever.

however we are going on a cooking course later today and we wanted to go on a 3 day trek so dosed up on paracetomal we went to book it. not sure if it was a good idea or not but my body exceeded all expectations and i had a really good time (despite the fact that i was so stressed about taking every medicine you can think of on the trek that i forgot my fleeces and slept terribly as it was freezing).

The walking was easy and the tour guide really nice and we met up with different groups of people an went swimming by waterfalls and bamboo rafting and elephant riding and stayed in hilltribe villages and had camp fires and hung out with the local hill tribe people. yay!

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Thanks everyone for your lovely birthday messages...have never not wanted a birthday so much and not sure i like being 30 at all. I met a girl in nz who was 34 but she said it just felt wrong saying she was 34 as she didn't look like it and didn't feel it. that's what i feel like. no one believes me and i don't want them too. seeing as i was premature i've decided to stay 29 until March 11 or whenever it was i was meant to be born, not sure what i'm goig to do after that...