So now we are home! The flight was uneventful , the four hour wait at Heathrow to get the first bus back to Exeter was endured. The drop in temperature from thirty two degrees C to minus two degrees C was a bit of a shock and we were forced to change out of shorts and t shirts at Heathrow.

Our bus journey back to Exeter was also unremarkable and our friends, Geoff and Mary were waiting for us at the bus station when we arrived. It was only in their car on the A30 that we realised that had left our duty free in the luggage rack in the coach.

Geoff pulled in and the tour director having made sure that I was duly told off, phoned the company to report our stupidity. They said they would look for the carrier bag once the bus had returned to its depot in Plymouth. I felt absolutely awful about it.

Geoff and Mary had prepared a wonderful lunch for us which we enjoyed and having finished that we rang the bus depot who told us that had our carrier bag safe and sound. We were more than grateful and arranged to pick it up the next day.

We eventually returned to our house at three thirty both of us glad to be home but at the same time sad that this adventure is over. I feel all homecomings like this contain a real mix of emotions and that feeling is really difficult to describe, there is a novelty about being back in your own house tempered with a degree of melancholy. Our family tour has allowed us to spend time with family members we would not normally see, let alone spend time with. We have returned with an abundance of memories, all of them comforting and all of them happy. Whilst we have our health we need to travel, we need to learn from other people and we need to widen our horizons so that we remain rounded individuals with our feet on the ground, happy with our blessings and the life we lead. To see poverty in Vietnam, which is absolute in cases, makes you realise how very lucky we are.

Thank you to the five thousand one hundred and sixty people who have bothered to read this. I will keep an eye on it in future, but until the tour director and I decide to travel again there will be no more entries.