Back to earth

I took a strong painkiller in Chiang Mai airport, and woke up on the plane as we approached Bangkok, drool extending from my open mouth down to my elbow. That's the way to travel. There was only a short stop in Suvarbhami before we got onto the plane home to Hong Kong, and there my troubles began.

Normally I'm quite fortunate and don't get nausea on planes, but on the way back I was bent over double, clutching my head and trying not to die. After an hour, I stumbled back to the toilets and threw up, but that didn't make me feel any better. Especially when I was producing bright yellow vomit from the orange juice I'd drunk earlier. Joyous.

I'm going to pin the blame on the salad I had for lunch (a mouthful of cucumber salad, leavened with flies and scraps of prawn) but that may be unfair. Even after my upchuck, I was still just as ropey, worried that I'd be denied entry to Hong Kong when I chundered over an immigration official as I came through the gate.

Luckily, no such calamity was visited on Hong Kong's finest. We got through without any event, our bicycles were returned to us on a trolley, and then we caught the train back to Central. (One of the many wonders of travelling with a bicycle in Asia is that all you do is take off the pedals and turn the handlebars round, rather than spend hours disassembling your bike into a hundred pieces, putting them in a specially padded bag and then being charged for excess luggage. Or discover Easyjet have flown you to Geneva and left your bike on the tarmac at Gatwick.)

I got home, went to bed, got up this morning, threw up, went back to bed, slept all day, occasionally waking to issue feverish commands to the cat ('get down from the wardrobe!' 'stop licking me!' 'invade Poland!'). Not the most exciting of days, I suppose.