The Whisky Diaries - final entry

Well friends, I have found myself sitting here at the end of a very long journey. 

Today is the very last day of this epic journey that began on the 1st of January last year. I'm sitting in the transfers section of the Kuala Lumpur airport and in a few hours I will board the plane that takes me back home. It's big. This is a big thing for me. I've been dreaming of home for so long now that a small part of me is worried that it really is just a dream and somehow it might all be snatched away just before I land. I don't know, it doesn't make a lot of sense, I think I just can't believe I'm finally going home. But my mum is washing my puppy dog as I type this so that he is fluffy and clean for me to see tomorrow morning, so I'm feeling like there is a space for me. I do have a home and it's been waiting for me and I'll be there again in less than 12 hours.

Now that I'm here at the end, I can see that the Phuket time and the Whisky Diaries was an absolutely necessary limbo, and that I might have been totally overwhelmed and just overloaded if I had of gone straight from China back to Brisbane. They were also just 14 lovely wonderful awesome days. Yesterday we hired a scooter again and drove around the island for almost the whole day - we even went cross-country through the dirt tracks and amongst the rubber tree plantations to get to a hidden beach that looked like a postcard. Crazy stuff. Breathtaking, crazy stuff. I was sad to leave Sabai Corner because we'd actually become friends with the two women that run it, and they were just so damn nice. I couldn't be too sad when I was sipping that last coconut though, because I'm just so ready to get home.

So now is the time I really sit down and think about all of the things I've done since January last year, all of the experiences and the things I've learnt, who I am now compared to before. I'm going to re-read the long letter I wrote to myself on my first flight out of Brisbane all those months ago. I feel like it would be impossible to think about these things too much, and that I should try and reflect now as much as I can before I get home into the whirlwind of family and friends and wonderful home life.

Now that I think about it, actually, this is the last entry for poise on arrows as a travel blog. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with this thing, but I think creating it and sticking to it was one of the best decisions I made throughout my whole time travelling. Writing everyday made me realise that I actually wanted to be the kind of person who writes everyday, and poise gave me a forum at which I had to really express my experiences and their significance. I don't know if I would understand these past 13 months nearly as well as I do now if I hadn't been blogging and writing the whole time. Putting aside an hour (often more) every single day to manifest your feelings and memories into writing - well, it's a powerful thing for an individual. I'm also pretty sure I want to be a writer now. So that's great too. I feel honoured to have so many people reading about my bumbling experiences and looking at my embarrassing photos of pulling-a-face-like-a-camel. I'm also really grateful that I could keep in touch with friends and family back home so easily.

I have a jam-packed February planned but it begins with a week of quality quiet family time, so you won't see anything posted here for a while. I suppose sometime around the 12th or 13th I will have decided what I'm going to do with poise and I'll let you all know then. 

For now, though, this is Bri Lee signing off from the big adventure. It's all done and over. And thanks for coming with me.