Cleared customs, picked up our bags and after another generous ride from my friend Don, finally made it home yesterday at around 2pm. First order of business was to put my clothes from my suitcase directly into the laundry machine and hop into my first shower that didn’t involve also drenching the sink and toilet for the first time in about 10 days. From there it was fighting off every urge to take a nap in an effort to convince my body it was really on east coast time.

My first meal back was from my favorite take out place, El Pollo Rico followed by a late night drink in DC to celebrate the birthday of my friend Alyssa. All of this managed to keep me awake until about 1am. 12 hours later, I finally woke feeling like I could have slept for another 12.

While I am glad to be home, clean and (somewhat) rested, the larger part of me wishes I could be back on the road. Jeff and I agreed another week back on the beaches of Thailand with a much more leisurely pace – and by leisurely, I mean laying on the beach doing nothing – would have been a great alternate end to the trip.

Today I’ll enjoy a little NFL playoff football and begin the arduous task of organizing photos. I’ll have a couple of more posts in the next few days to wrap up the experience but before I get to that, I wanted to publicly thank the people that made this such a great experience…

Thanks to Dung, Joslyn, Bob, Laura B, Ginny, Caesar, Sally, Jules and anyone I may have forgotten for all of the suggestions, advice and assistance related to the trip. Special thanks to Jules for keeping suggestions coming as things changed on the fly while we were in Asia.

Thanks to Michelle OL and Ginny for help with my exhaustive search for the perfect travel bag. Sometimes I go a little overboard weighing pros and cons. This was one of those situations but I ended up with the perfect bag and would be happy to lend my knowledge to anyone in need.

Thanks to all of my friends and family who put up with my emails, read or commented on my blog, followed along with Jeff’s blog and sent emails just saying hello. I feared being a little annoying with the updates (especially via email) but hope you enjoyed following along half as much as I enjoyed being there.

And finally, thanks to Jeff for making this a reality for me, for taking care of all of the travel and accommodation plans, for putting up with any annoyances I may have provided over the past 21 days (there had to have been some), for keeping up with his blog that I know I’ll go back to read time and time again and for being a near perfect travel companion.