Hong Kong Inflatables

For some unknown reason there's a selection of inflatables at West Kowloon Cultural District at the minute (site of Beertopia), I think it's supposed to be art or something. Either way it provided us with some free entertainment for half an hour on a sunny Saturday.

The first installation you encounter is called 'Complex Pile'....

Just why?? 

Close up

Closer up, with all the fine details. Don't get it! 

Next up, an inflatable pig. I think you could have gone inside this but I didn't realise that at the time. 

Giant half buried cockroach.... again, no idea.

Impressive, but I'm still not sure I understand! 

Stonehenge I did like, a lot. It was a big bouncy castle base too, bonus.

Enjoying the bouncy castle element! 

'Complex Pile' in front of the ICC (tallest building in HK, where we had Christmas dinner) 

View from the exhibition across the harbour.

And as if that wasn't enough inflatables for one day, the giant duck was also in town!! This is also in the name of art - the artist Florentijin Hofman claims it is a 'happiness inducing sculpture that gives people a break from their daily routines'. I can buy this, I think it's ace, I also like to think he swam there himself.

DUCK!

Me + duck :)

There's some great pictures of him arriving in HK online, I'd paste them here but am too lazy to credit them to the correct sources. He did have an unfortunate incident though and the poor thing deflated. This led to lots of jokes about him getting avian flu and/or various other diseases due to the air and harbour pollution! Fortunately he's now back to full health and will sit in the harbour for another couple of weeks :)

Asian Escapes #3 - Phuket

Soz - appears I'm a pretty rubbish blogger lately, not sure why - working and playing too hard possibly!

(Asian escape #1 was Macau and #2 was Bangkok, should you be at all interested.)

So... Phuket... it was brill! I'd say much more our scene than Bangkok, mainly in that there's nothing much to do apart from laze about eating and drinking compared to Bangkok where we felt guilty for not visiting temples and historic sites.

We flew Thai airways this time - the plane was all funky bright colours, they served good food and had a much better entertainment system than we expected. We arrived at our hotel and in true thai hospitality were greeted with a nice cold towel and fresh fruit cocktail while we checked in. We were a little early so they asked if we'd mind waiting by the pool with a (free) drink while they got our room ready, not really no! The lady returned about twenty minutes later to say that they were in fact upgrading us to a suite for the night, sadly not for the whole 4 nights.

This is in fact a mocktail, not a cocktail 

Cute bunny flannel things 

Enormous bed 

Massive couch and tv area 

Hot tub!!! (not quite as good as it looked... it was full of cold water which we emptied, then realised it would take about 10 hours to refill with hot water so decided to save the polar bears and not bother).

The suite looks pretty nice right? Not so much after we sat out on the balcony in the evening having a drink when a cockroach fell on Stephens head - ACK! We swiftly ran inside to find the place had been overrun with flying ants, cue a call to reception asking if they had any bug spray we could borrow. Crisis averted and we got on with our evening, also learnt our lesson and bought bug repellent, bug killer and bug candles for the following day!

We went for a walk along the beach on the first day:

Pretty decent non? 

Grabbing a bite to eat at the other end of the beach - tom yum / thai basil noodles / thai prawn crackers 

That was about as far as our exploration of Phuket (specifically Kata and Karon) went to be honest, the following days were spent playing obscene amounts of candy crush relaxing and reading by the pool, bliss. I like Thailand a lot from what I've seen so far, this may be a function of the fact that food and drink is so good but also so cheap! We were eating at the top restaurants on tripadvisor for only a few quid a meal, similar for cocktails with beer much cheaper.

Frozen margarita number 1 of several 

Tasty food 

Gorgeous view from the suite 

Our view for most of the days 

View from the standard room

Went for a walk to the next village one night but gave up halfway, a bit pleased with my sunset snap en route though!

Standard 

Stephen discovered the banana pancake cart:

They're very popular, perfect walking home after a few beers snack. 

This man has banana chopping skillz! (40 baht is approx. £1). 

Doesn't look much but pancake full of freshly cooked banana is surprisingly tasty.

We spent an enjoyable hour one evening at Dinopark Minigolf. I'd like to claim I won (the score card says so..) but there may have been a small element of cheating involved. I know I know, only cheating myself....

Brontesaurus? 

Stephen + dino chums (unimpressed face likely related to the fact I was doubling his scores on the score card...)

We spent another evening at a bar with a FlowRider. The last project I worked on in the UK had one of these in a leisure centre up near Durham... not sure the idea is quite as appealing as sat watching outdoors late at night whilst drinking Pina Coladas in Thailand but you never know! Either way, it's great entertainment - we got to see a good mix of pros and beginners, I'd love to have a go but not sure I'm brave enough to try in public!?

Flowrider

And finally, a last day treat of lunch by the pool - shame I only discovered how good the hotel food was on the last day!

Prawns on crispy noodles plus favourite mango sticky rice, yum.

I did warn you it was mainly food and drink! Asian escape #4 coming soon - it's buddhas birthday on Friday so we're using our day off wisely and flying to Kuala Lumpur for a long weekend, can't wait.