Hong Kong - July / August 2019

Back to normal in Hong Kong after a lot of travel recently. Enjoying spin class on the weekend...

Protests against the extradition bill have been going on for over a month now...

Found a new Korean place for dinner, in LKF...

Went bowling with my colleague one Friday night, at the South China Athletic Club, in Causeway Bay...

A rare blue sky day. View from my office...

Melbourne - July 2019

Two days back at work then headed for Melbourne with Callum. He is competing in the World Championship Rubiks Cube competition !

Flew all day Wednesday and were delayed due to weather in Melbourne. Finally got to the apartment at 23:30 - a long day !

Thursday we registered for the competition but found out he had been excluded from 2 events as he hadn't competed for those before. So it is just the 2 x 2 and 3 x 3 on Saturday.

Thursday night, Alex and Eliza arrive from Sydney.

This is the view from our apartment, looking straight across to the convention centre...

The day time view...

Had breakfast the next morning at the Boatbuilders Yard.  Nice to sit by an open fire but the food was expensive and average...

This is looking back at our apartment from the convention centre...

In the afternoon, I went for a coffee at this place, which had been recommended...

That afternoon, I met up with an old colleague, for a drink, at The Mail Exchange Hotel...

On Friday, we caught the tram to St Kilda and had lunch. It is an awful cold windy day...

Eliza taking a selfie when she was meant to be photographing me !

On the tram back to town. I'm not sure what I have done this time !

Looking the other way...at least there's some blue sky...

Had a swim and steam at the apartment...

Saturday we front up for the 2x2, Callum's first event. Unfortunately he's at the back of the stage and we can't see his time. He does 5 solves and they average his times...

This is one of the Hemsworth's made from cubes...

Saturday morning we went for a walk, and ended up at this place for coffee...

We went back to the competition in the afternoon, for Callum's 2nd event - the 3x3. He met the reigning world champion, a fellow Aussie, called Feliks Zemdegs. Feliks is 23 and the only person to have won the world championships twice !

That's Callum in the middle of the screen...

Saturday night we went for a drink, at a rooftop bar called Electric Union, in Chinatown. This guy was playing the bottles...

Yes it's really cold.

Then we had some Chinese food and caught a tram back to the apartment.

Phuket - Friday 5 July to Sunday 7 July

Friday is another beautiful day. We hung by the pool in the morning...

In the afternoon, we went to the beach, and the kids went paragliding...

Saturday is more of the same. This is from one of the restaurants where we have breakfast...

Today we went to the adults only pool...

Phuket - Thursday 4 July 2019

Today we have booked a tour to Phang Nga Bay, which is where James Bond Island is.

I don't like tours so I picked the sunrise tour hoping it would be less busy, and there would be less people on the bay. So a 4:30 wakeup for a 4:45 pickup !

Were taken to the marina on the other side of the island and got on a large speedboat. This was an expensive tour at A$180 per person but I wanted a good tour on a good boat. There were about 30 people and the tour was well organised.

We motored for about an hour and then got to the bay where there are a lot of interesting limestone formations. We met our canoes and were taken through some caves and generally around.

Eliza and Callum had their own canoe...

We went to a muslim village largely built over the water. Malaysian travellers established it about 250 years ago.

After that,we motored a bit more to an island where we had about 45 minutes to swim. Overcast day but the water was warm.

Then to another place for a tasty lunch at a very local place. We were starving by now as breakfast was not good.