I'm Spartacus

As promised, here is a set of pictures that are hard to beat......






Argentina won the Bowl. Their captain stopped for us to take his picture. Now he said, you hold the Bowl and I will take your picture. Kieran and Ross delighted.



 Then the England boys won the Plate and all these players seem to have the ability to effortlessly take selfies.....I liked this one
 

Worse was then to come for the poor England captain as Ross indicated to him that, as the Argentine captain had let us pose with the Bowl, it would only be fair for them to pose with the Plate...... then these two lookers came along and the day was complete.

Well, the day was certainly complete for this chap who chose a very strange place for a lie down.

 I am pleased to say our tour finished in a very secret squirrel restaurant on the mid-levels. When booking the restaurant you got  a code for a door in a very non-descript alley. You went upstairs and there was a twelve cover restaurant knocking out the best Chinese you could imagine. Cheers Ross a great find and a marvellous way to end the tour.

Fiji again

So the Hong Kong sevens finished today with another win for Fiji as they beat New Zealand in the final. Sunday was a great last day with some really classy matches, but the weather in the morning was wild. I was soaked through by lunchtime so had to retire to the hotel for a kit change

England won the plate/shield ,beating USA in the final, with Dan Norton winning the speedster competition. I will post some memorable photo's on here later, including Kieran and Ross with the trophies and an ex-Twickenham player in the England team.

Friday the lads were in the South terrace and on Saturday we were all front row in the East stand. We then hit a roof top restaurant where a bottle of wine cost twice as much as our whole meal on the Sunday!!

Just met an England mum whose son couldn't play because of Hong Kong belly...must be a bugger. Hopefully he will be ok for Singapore next week although word is the city might not be....it's their first time hosting and the support infrastructure might be a bit frayed...hey go, lets go!!

Happy ending

You must be joking. Just had the most aggressive massage known to man, by a man. If that does not unknot me, nothing will.

Last day in Penang today then red eye flight to Hong Kong tomorrow. England playing South Africa tomorrow night but we will give that session a miss and embrace the group stages on Saturday.

Always a few sights to see, shopping and beer, so a full on four days in store. No partying with Jonah Lomu or Chris Sheasby for SWMBO this year but I am sure she will find plenty else to do.

Tick tock

Gosh its hot and sweaty here. In and out of the pool is the only way to keep cool. Today was the party golf challenge on the par 3 executive course. I managed to level with Kieran on the final hole.

Its been useful having the golf net and course as I have been trying to improve my short game although we have to play at 07:30 to avoid the heat.

Last night we hit the food court. Whole red snapper for less than a fiver. Now those cockney rhyming slang specialists will know a fiver is a lady, as in Lady Godiver. What I didn't know until recently is that £15 is called a Lionel after Lionel Ritchie who sang 'once, twice, three times a lady' Well blow me down!

Managed to purchase a Hublot Big Bang watch in the night market for less than £30. They are £12k retail. Think I got a bargain!!!

Penang Penang ole biscuit barrel

Not sure why I called it thus but the title has a Monty Python/Monster Raving Looney Party feel to it. Maybe its  bit of a Brexit influence too.

Anyway here we are on the beach at Batu Ferriggi in Penang, Malaysia. It's a bit of a time warp as far as I am concerned.

I was last here in 1982 with a chum, Neil Brown. We travelled to Singapore in the days of Boogie Street and Change Alley before taking the train to Butterworth via Kuala Lumpar. In those days you then got a ferry to Georgetown,the Penang main town, but now there is a choice of two bridges.

We are staying in the Rasa Sayang hotel which was here all those years ago. We stayed then in its sister hotel, the Golden Sands. That hotel was demolished to extend the Rasa, with a new highrise Golden Sands built further up the beach.

When Neil and I were here we were in the middle of a Holiday Superstars competition modelled on the cult TV programme of the same name.

Neil won the skyscraper race up 20 stories of our condo in Singapore. I won the swimming. Then in Penang Neil won the squash and tennis. We then played a game of chess using the giant hotel garden set which must have lasted four hours. I won that by a whisker. The other events have been lost to time.

We also guested in the nightly footie roll up at Fort Georgetown with the locals a couple of times, before getting up at 03:00 one morning to watch Englang v West Germany in the World Cup. The locals all chipped in so the match could be screened live by satellite. They were delighted two English joined them!

The old Georgetown is now a UNESCO World heritage site, sadly swallowed up by the new developments of 40 odd years building.

This visit is a bit of r & r prior to a trip to Hong Kong for the rugby sevens. It will be interesting to see the event prior to its debut at the Olympics in Rio later this year.