Today is our final final day of our holiday. Today we actually leave for home. Taking advantage of the opportunity we sleep in very late, and when we wake we organise our stuff and pack for the final time. Ready to leave now, but with our flight not til 7:30 we have some time to kill.

We head off into town with our hearts set on finding a massage. The streets between our hotel and the centre are littered with massage places so we find one which looks good to us and pop inside. Mrs Tom opts for a traditional Khmer/Thai massage and I for an aromatherapy relaxation one. Mrs Tom also decides to get her finger and toe nails tarted up too. Both our massages are ok, though not amazing, and when I come back downstairs my massage lady had doubled up on Mrs Tom to speed her nail treatment along. They do a reasonable job on the nails (so she tells me, I have no idea) and after drinking my tea we settle up with the massage folks and set off for lunch.

We find somewhere not too far away fromthe massage place, and away from the main centre, and sit down for yet another good meal, our last in Cambodia and last of the trip. We sit with our drinks for a while, and then head off for the more mainstream area. On the way we pass the “old” market and peruse the stalls and I take a fancy to an oil painting. We have a look around the chap’s stall but I’m kind of set on the first one I saw, so I agree to buy it from the seller, who wraps it up nicely for me in a rather pretty looking tube made of palm leaf.

Happy with my picture we move on to a cafe bar type place where we both have a beer and watch the world go by. It’s not long before Mrs Tom spots the banana split on the menu, with cookie crumble I might add, so we order one. Though in appearance it is a bit more like an ice cream sundae we don’t hold that against them and scoff it down, very nice it is too. Once I’ve finished my second beer, it’s time to head back to the hotel to grab our stuff and head to the airport, so we tuk tuk our way back to the hotel.

Once we’ve cleared out our room and ensured we’ve not left anything behind, we drag our bags down to the foyer and check out of the hotel. I’d already arranged with a tuk tuk driver to pick us up at 5 and dutifully he is waiting for us when we emerge from the hotel. Like a gent he takes our bags from us and loads them onto his tuk tuk and on we clamber too.

It’s further to the airport than I remember but still not more than a 15 minute journey. Soon we’re at the entrance and we grab our bags and say goodbye to Mr B, our driver. We’re 10 minutes too early to check in so we sit and fill out our immigration departure cards and by the time we are done, a nice queue has formed in front of us at the now open check-in desks. It still goes quickly and then it’s off to the payment booth – you have to pay $25 a head to be allowed to leave the country in Cambodia as a foreigner ($18 as a national), so I hand over our cash. The lady checks the notes very carefully (which I’ve just gotten out of an ATM) and hands one of them back to me, pointing at a rough edge on one end of the note. This rather snookers us because we have no more money, and I didn’t really want to pay by card if I could help it. I discover that the offending rough edge is just the result of some sticky, Sellotape sort of clear paper which I peel off, and thankfully the official is then happy to accept the note and give us our stamp.

It’s then through immigration and security checking and finally we are in to the waiting area. We only have three usable dollars to our name now as I’ve ballsed up the money calculations, so we sit outside a coffee shop with no coffee wating for our flight to be called. With 20 minutes until the planned take off time I begin to get concerned that we’re going to be late, and at 15 minutes to go we start to board. Amazingly the flight still takes off at 19:30 on the dot, how’s that for efficiency.

The flight is a short one of pretty much an hour dead, so when we land at the other side we have around four hours until our next flight is due to take off. This though is taken care of by the airport systems, who happily while away our time for us. First we go through immigration and then collect our bags. We then go through customs, and then out along the exit complex and up to the 4th floor for departures, where we have to go through immigration and customs again. By the time we get through all of that there are less than two hours to go until take off. We wander around the shops for a bit, nicking free samples of goodies along the way and eventually find our gate. Once through a boarding card check we are able to sit down and await our flight on our backsides. Mrs Tom manages to finish her book before the flight boards, which turns out to be around 20 minutes late, and eventually we find ourselves on the airplane in our seats.

Not so lucky with the flight this time, we get two seats on the right of the plane next to another chap, so no spreading out for a comfy lay down. Almost as soon as the flight takes off this bloke is snoring loudly, and a chap three places to my left across the aisle is snoring even louder, his body cavorting in his sleep like he’s having some sort of fit. Thankfully the fitting business stops eventually, but the stereo snoring continues for much of the flight.

I said it at the beginning and I’ll say it now, Thai Air is awesome. As I sit here right now having my breakfast served, I’ve got loads of leg room, I’ve had a free beer and wine with my dinner a few hours ago (chicken curry, very nice), my seat reclines without amputating anyone’s legs, there are plenty of toilets, the staff are polite and friendly, it’s just fab. And all on economy too.

Ok, we’ve just had breakfast and it was shit, but it’s been the only bad experience on both flights with Thai Air.

There isn’t really much to report on the flight as apart from the meals we spend most of our time sleeping, me writing this diary during the times when I’m awake. Eventually we land on time, grab our bags and wait for the bus to take us to the car park. After a minor blip finding the bus stop, eventually we get our bus back tithe car park and pick up the car. Home at last, in the blistering cold land of blighty. Well, nearly. The car battery is flat, so we wait for the chap with a battery starter to help us on our way.

Holiday, finally over. It had to happen some time.