In essence I didn’t want to leave Myanmar. I summed up my reasons in a typically biased manner in 5 Reasons I Love Myanmar but the 28 day visa had only one day left on it and so I had to cross the border into Thailand pronto.

Perhaps I should have followed up the previous post with 5 reasons I don’t love Myanmar… But that would have been unnecessarily negative and I can’t actually think of 5. Here’s one though: on the very straightforward sounding 4 hour journey to the border we had to pay a ridiculous number of bribes to the militia / insurgents / whatever you call them and I’ve not seen so many AK47s casually slung over shoulders since the favelas of Brazil (I’m not counting the marching armies in Nepal). It was fine. But might I suggest if you go there… Take a flight.

And so it was back to modern city life… 18 days of visiting various generous and beautiful friends of Bangkok, Perth and Sydney saw me back to pounding the modern pavements hard. 15 miles running around a 1.5 mile lake in Bangkok (mind numbing), interval training up and down the river in Perth (sweltering)… It was all going so well.

I’m not surprised however that by the time I touched down in Sydney my legs gave up. Hard concrete, late nights, Thai liquor and Ozzie wine? Scottish girl plods. Then Scottish girl… Ummm stops running altogether. The body started to say no. To be specific the legs had shin splints and the ears and throat were closing up in protest. I embarked upon a 24 hour journey to Los Angeles. Three days in and $275 lighter I leave a doctor’s surgery in Santa Monica clutching a bottle of antibiotics. Antibiotics coated in gold apparently. I got a steroid shot too. Entirely unnecessary but hey when in Rome and all that.

And so it is, in 4 days I’m doing another marathon. I’ve never felt less healthy in the past 4 months but I’m confident the American cheers will get me through… Along with the New York style cheesecake, flourless chocolate cake (c’mon its LA!) and champagne recently consumed. I’m taking it all very seriously as ever. But it’s a surf themed marathon! With a surf board shaped medal! In California! This can surely be nothing less than fantastic?!