Then we went to my parents’ new place in a tiny village near Zurich, which is going to be my home for the next couple of months at least (I need to find a temp job while I do a proper job hunt in the UK and Ireland). It was sad that everyone except for my parents had to leave to go back to Basel in the evening, but as far as coming home experiences go, this one couldn’t have been much better! Now if only I wasn’t missing Wellington so badly…

As always, all my photos can be found on Flickr. The rest of the homecoming photos, Australia and Singapore are collected here, New Zealand here.

I’ve had a lovely time here in Singapore despite my nasty cold, doing shopping and eating yummy food with Amy. Also, again I managed to be here for the Lantern Festival in the Chinese Garden – this year’s topic was (oh dear…) “Hello Kitty”. Still, it was very pretty!

Also, a photo of Nancy’s lovely parents and brother in front of their house in Claremont (suburb of Perth):

More things I did here: Explored the beautiful Kings Park Botanic Gardens, visited the lovely Perth Zoo, another trip to Fremantle (or Freo, as the locals call it), a family outing down the coast, lunch with Chris and Gill from the Uluru tour and Scarborough Beach with Fiona (who I’d met on the bus to Monkey Mia) and her boyfriend. Oh, and played with Nancy’s three cute cats (Rogue, Melma and Lenny) and a lonely little dog named Alby on the way to the train station here. I might also have indulged in a little bit of retail therapy and caught a bit of a cold, which I hope will go away and stop bothering me.

As always, all photos can be found on Flickr here. And a cute little video of a monkey playing at the zoo:

As always, all photos can be found here. Less than a week now until I leave down under and head to Singapore for a couple of days…

Also, I discovered another little movie I made in Monkey Mia – pelicans vying for fish leftovers at sunset:

As always, all photos are here on Flickr. Also, I made two little movies of dolphins:

It’s been a relaxing few days. Monday evening I went to admire the “Stairway to the Moon”, which was incredible – I’ve never seen a moon that big or that golden, it was almost like a sunrise… On Tuesday me and Frederike went to Cable Beach, which is all white sand and turquoise water, and in the evening Barbara and I saw “Mongol” at the open-air cinema, which has been showing movies for over 90 years. Today I went to the beach again and walked along it to a place where you can see dinosaur footprints at low tide. Unfortunately the tide had turned when I got there, but it was still a beautiful place. As always, all photos are here on Flickr.

Also, Dave sent two group shots from the Uluru tour, which our guide Mike took at Kata Tjuta:

There are a couple of from the train, where I met Arin from Taiwan and Tina from Germany, quite a number from the daytrip to Litchfield National Park Tina and I did (where we met Vanessa, also from Germany) and of course some from Darwin, which I enjoyed a lot – sunshine, beaches (no swimming, though), stunning sunsets and meeting some old friends again: Gill, Chris and April from the Uluru tour and Mike and Lauren from Melbourne-Adelaide.

And a small movie from the Sunset Market, where we enjoyed two sets by the didgeridoo & drums combo eMDee:

As always, all photos can be found here on Flickr. I’m going to miss bumping into people I know now that I’m on the west coast! However, it seems very busy here, all hostels booked out. But because the tourism industry here is much smaller tours etc. are much more expensive and I don’t think I can afford any more daytrips. Luckily there’s a beach only a busride away from the hostel, so I’m sure I won’t be bored – if I can find a book exchange, that is, as I’m almost out of reading material!

I wanted to share the many incredible pictures I took, but the internet is very slow today, so I think I’ll try again tomorrow. Here are two photos I managed to upload, from Kings Canyon: