Waking up this morning at 5:45am was hard, I felt really tired and groggy after a late night celebrating. No hangover which was nice given the 30 hours of travelling back home.

It was also a little sad waking up today, after 7 magical days here in Myanmar, it was coming to an end.

Have a read of my DAY 1 DAY 2 DAY 3 DAY 4 DAY 5 DAY 6 and DAY 7 blogs to get the full story of the week.

Pam managed to capture this beautiful shot of the sunrise on our last day. Once again, another example of the natural beauty of this country.

After a quick breakfast we were on the bus for 6:30am and on our way to Mandalay Airport where the whole group would fly back to Yangon.

The plane didn’t look the best, a small propeller type plane but it was comfortable enough and I managed to get an extra hour of sleep.

When we landed in Yangon, this was where the group would start going in our separate ways. Sean, Mark & Luke were heading south to spend a week exploring the beaches of Myanmar. Debs, Yvette, Michelle, Torie & Dan were spending a few more days in Yangon. The rest of us were flying on to Singapore, where we would lose Ali leaving just Justine, Daisy, Chris, Pam, Steph, Stuart, Laura, Sam, Sarah, Ken and myself flying on to Heathrow.

As we landed at 10:30am and were not due to depart for Singapore until 5:30pm, Sam had arranged for Toe, our guide from Day 1 in Yangon to meet us at the airport.

She took us to a local market to grab some lunch and have a look around the local shops. I took this opportunity to grab some snacks for the flight home. Some mints and what looked like Pringles but were called Kracks.

We then went to a swimming pool to spend a few hours relaxing and swimming before heading back to the airport.

It wasn’t until jumping into the pool, that I finally started to feel myself again, the lack of sleep had taken its toll but I was starting to wake up now.

It was a nice way to spend the afternoon, just the small group of us now relaxing together in the pool.

It was only 15 mins on the bus to the airport where we left Toe and went on our way to Singapore. We had a slight delay of 20 mins but had time to spare before catching the connecting flight to Heathrow, well we had 80 mins which was enough to take the Airtrain around Singapore airport and get through to the gate.

The flight back to London was 13 hours and felt every bit as long as that sounds. My Garmin tracked 4hrs 25mins of sleep, I was hoping to get a good 6 or 7 hours but I always struggle to sleep on a flight.

I killed some time watching movies, editing my photos and videos and just munching through all of my snacks plus lots of muffins from the flight.

It was emotional saying bye to everyone at the airport. Our little team of 20 was all going its separate ways and back to real life.

I have made some friends for life on this trip. We had such a great bunch of people from all walks of life, all coming together for one challenge. I was truly inspired by the effort that some of the team put in to get it done.

I do hope that we get the opportunity to meet up again in the future either on other challenges like this or something different back home.

Myanmar far exceeded my expectations. I came into this trip a little concerned for my safety. Only two weeks before the trip I received a travel advisory notice from the foreign office advising of specific bomb threats to airports in Myanmar on specific dates in October and November. One of which was a date when we would be using one of those airports. Also watching BBC documentaries or doing a quick Google search only shows the negative things of Myanmar, there are never any good or positive stories coming out to the western world. All of this made me wonder what it would be like there, would I be safe, do the people not like western tourists etc.

All of these concerns were so far from the reality that Myanmar is a stunning country, rich in history and religious beliefs. So many breathtaking sights both manmade and natural.

What made me fall in love with Myanmar the most was the people. They are the happiest, most caring and genuine people you will ever meet. Countless cars, trucks and scooters came past us with passengers waving, smiling, shouting hello and just being so nice and polite. They would come up to us and take photos with us, making us feel so welcome in their country. These are people who don’t have a lot, they work hard all day and go back to their families in the evenings, yet they are so happy and smily.

Us western people who complain about having to queue to get our Starbucks, moan about slow internet connections, struggle to balance work and family commitments. It makes you think that we have got it wrong here.

Anyway, my thoughts on Myanmar are that I loved the experience and the country. The people were amazing, the food, for the most part was really nice and there is so much breathtaking beauty around.

I can highly recommend visiting this country.