Hong Kong and St Petersburg

Posted here is the first batch of photos taken by me and dad from Hong Kong and St Petersburg.

I will only include some of the good ones because of the time it will take to upload the photos, and because dad will not let me include those of him drunk, with the stripper, when he had no clothing on or when he passed out in the hallway one night.

Blake is competing on Thursday morning and he is 33rd competitor or the 11th competitor in the third flight.

Hong Kong was amazing and extremely cheap. Dad is planning on sending mum back to Hong Kong some time so mum can go shopping. There was one shopping centre at Time Square that was something like 13 floors of shops. At the pace mum moves she could spend a week there if there was somewhere to sleep.

St Petersburg is freezing and was -5 the night we arrived and there was 10cm of fresh snow on the ground. No snow since but it has been drizzling and the temperature has warmed up to zero. The snow has melted and refrozen and has now formed a constant slab of slippery ice over the ground. The ice is really bad in the park that we have to walk through every day to get from the Metro to the Trampoline venue.

St Petersburg has the deepest single level subway system in the world. To get to the subway you have to travel on an escalator that goes very slowly downhill for 100m at a 45 degree angle. It takes about 4 minutes to reach the bottom.

Dad and I saw mum and Blake this morning, Dad says Blake seems tired and mum is the usual. Apparently Blake celebrated when he waves hello to me from the competition floor and I waved back. It was a moment of weakness or stupidity and will not happen again.
Below are some of the photos we took with a small description.

Dad made me include this picture because the fish were alive at this stall. I figure I held my breath for about three hours while I was in Hong Kong - I held it every time we walked past one of those shops that had dried fish, dried shark fin, dried oysters, dried anchovies (they really stunk) and dried just about anything else that came out of the ocean. Dad pointed out that there were no flies, but I think that was because the smell was even too bad for them.

Signs - Uncle Shane would make a fortune in Hong Kong. There were more signs than people. I do have some pictures of me with signs - Nathan Road and Nathan Place.

This is the view from our motel window in Hong Kong. It was on the 27th floor, which was a good thing for dad because the bar was on the 28th floor and he got two hours free drinks there every night. He did not have any trouble finding his way home.

Well, I thought I needed to pray for dad's salvation after all the evil things he has done in his life, and what better way than to visit a 25m high budda made out of bronz. I am sure the steps you have to walk up are a form of penance because it was certainly painful. I must have committed a few sins too, going by the pain level.

These are only some of the photos however I will post more later. The text written in the post was heavily revised by dad and is not my orignial work.