Hello Goodbye

Hello everyone (probably for the last time)! I'm alive (though that was a bit of a close call), I have finally, finally left Asia behind me (and I remind everyone to regularly remind me never to go back there) and I've made it the last stop on my tour - South Africa!

Let me just quickly recap the rest of my time in Asia: it sucked balls. Majorly. More storms, more cancelled tours (all in all a total of 4 days of actually seeing things vs. 12 days of seeing nothing), and to add insult to injury (or in that case, injury to insult): the day before my flight to Boracay (the one stop I was actually still looking forward to), I got really, really sick with...who knows what. Started out as an AC-induced bronchitis, pretty sure there was some dengue-like tropical virus in there as well, though, cause bronchitis does not explain the hell I went through the past week. Cause I've had bronchitis and stuff before, but I have never, ever felt this rotten before. So, all I managed to do on Boracay was lie in bed and feel utterly miserable for the whole time I was there. That was pretty much the most expensive sickbed I've ever had. Somehow managed to make it to Manila and from there somehow managed to make it to Singapore, where I was hoping to get a seat on one of the free city tours Singapore Airline offers its guests during my 8 hour layover. All that was looking pretty good as well: we arrived on time, I found the tour desk pretty quickly, there were only like 4 other people in front of me. And then it turned out, out of these 4 people, 3 were Indians who were either holding the line for like, 7 other people each or they simply were booking seats for 20 members of their family who couldn't be bothered getting in line themselves. So needless to say: no Singapore tour for Nicole and Indians have been newly added to my Asia shitlist. In short: fuck Asia. "Miss Nicole" is out.

So. South Africa. Despite a couple of slightly weird experiences so far (pretty sure my first Uber experience was also my last, for instance) and the weather holding for exactly one whole day before Nicole weather set in again (yesterday: blue skies and 37°C, today: grey skies, 20°C), so far at least I like it. It is quite possible, though, that all the baby animals I've stumbled upon in Krüger NP the past couple of days are kinda screwing with my perception a bit. But OMFG, why didn't anyone ever tell me how cute baby hyenas are? I don't care that they were the bad guys in Lion King, they're just to die for. Not to mention how adorably clumsy and tiny newborn elephants are? (Ok, ok, I'll stop. In short: Nicole likes safaris.). Tomorrow it's the Panorama Route for me and then I'm off to Cape Town, which is already my very last stop on this trip.

It's really weird, this trip feels incredibly long and incredibly short at the same time. The Philippines definitely felt like the longest fucking two weeks of my life, though, and they kinda changed my whole feeling for the trip. I'm kinda glad this is the last country, but I'm also not sure yet whether I actually want to go home. I think if the whole Asia fiasco hadn't happened, I'd still be up for more, but seeing as I'm still on like, 4 different medications and my clothes are starting to become mildewy from all the humidity, it's probably time to call it a day next week (not that I have a choice on that anyway). And I have the encore in December anyway (unless Eurowings decides to go strike next, which - knowing me and my immense luck when it comes to things like that - would definitely be par for the course).

So, countdown's on - a week from now, Germany should have me back!