Kunshan Trip - Day 1

So, in the last minute, I was invited to join my cousin, Paul, in China for training by one of our suppliers, all expenses paid, except plane tickets. At first, I was very hesitant to go. It was last minute, and the AZCOP Young Pro camp was this week. But my dad encouraged me to go, and after much prodding, I acceded. And now that I'm here, I'm glad I did come.

My flight was with Cebu Pacific since it was cheap, and also, it was the only one with an early flight back on Thursday, so I can come back early to head to the AZCOP camp. Unfortunately, the flight was 8pm Sunday night, and arriving in Shanghai at 12:40. From there, I had to take a 2-hour ride to Kunshan, which is south of Shanghai. Also, Cebu Pacific doesn't serve food or drinks, instead, selling them at a huge markup. I decided to buy Mickey D's, and take it out for the flight when I got hungry. Good thing I did. Anyway, the flight was uneventful, but I didn't get any sleep. Immigration through Shanghai was quick, but it was a long walk from where we got off the plane to the exit. There was a driver waiting for me, and this other guy from one of our rival companies. The driver was driving a Benz, and gave us wet towels and water, then took our luggages to the car. I made some small talk with the driver in Mandarin, and with the other guy in Tagalog, but after a while, I got tired, and just stopped talking, but couldn't fall asleep. After 2 hours, we got to the hotel, which was actually a really nice hotel, and the part of town it was in was like Mississauga, except with more hotels and restaurants, and an industrial park here and there. The roads were clean, and there was no traffic. Anyway, once we got to the hotel and checked-in, I went up to my room, where Paul was already sound asleep. I quietly unpacked, texted my parents, then went to bed. 4 hours later, I woke up to the sound of my alarm, and got ready. Paul and I ate breakfast downstairs, which was a buffet like Shangri-La's. They had tons of food. Then we went to the lobby to wait for the bus. When we got there, the other people were already there. Everyone was so friendly, and started introducing themselves to us and each other, and we all started talking. There were a lot of people from the supplier's different branches who were there to receive training. There were also people from different countries who also had printing businesses. They were also friendly with us, and didn't mind sharing trade secrets. After the introductions, we all got in the bus and left for the training. On the way, we saw a whole slew of police officers loitering around a park. It turns out that there are a lot of police in this town, so it's pretty safe.

Once we got to the training grounds, they gave us a tour, and started with the training. Most of today were classroom lessons, but I knew most of the stuff. I did learn some new things, though, which was good. Lunch was at their cafeteria, and it was weird. They gave us pork stew and shrimp with vegetables and rice. They were pretty salty. But it was free, so whatever. Oh, I got to drink their Coke here, and it tasted like Coke with lychee flavour. Kinda interesting. Oh, and the lid is opened much like you would open those chinese juices in cans. Yeah, weird. Anyway, the training was from 9:30am to 5pm. A long day, but we learned a lot. After that, they took us back to the hotel to rest for a bit, and then they would take us out for dinner. They took us to this place about half an hour away from where we were. It was near the ocean, I think, or some large body of water anyway. There were a lot of restaurants around there, except they all look like modern houses with glass walls in front so you can see inside. Each of them had 2 floors, with tons of rooms. To our surprise, at the back of all those houses were rivers or lakes or some large body of water, and they had boards there for them to walk through, and tons of nets to catch crabs, which was what they were popular for. We went in one of the restaurants and they ordered for us. They ordered a lot of food, from shrimp, snail, eel, steamed fish, steamed chicken, spinach, soup, etc. And they served those first before the crab. It was a good hour before they got to the crabs. We were all saving our appetites for them. When they finally came, it was interesting. We each got 2 crabs, one male and one female. They weren't that big. I'd say the size of a hand. But they had a lot of roe, and they were not bad. Everyone was using their hands, and enjoying the crabs quite a bit. I'd say the crabs were the highlight of the dinner. The other foods were... different. They had a different taste to it. Oh, and they also ordered rice wine for us, cuz they said it balances the crabs, something to do with the Chinese yin/yang thing of foods. The rice wine was ok. Kind of strong, but I was never really into wine. At the end, we were more interested in the labels of the wine bottle than the wine itself, with each of us trying to guess what method and materials were used.

After dinner, we headed back home, and it was 9pm when we got back. One of the people invited us all for free foot massages, but everyone was tired, and took a raincheck for tomorrow instead. I went back up to my room to relax, and use the internet, which was normally 60 yen, but free of charge for me. It's great!

Well, that's it for my first day. Stay tuned for the second day. In the meantime, check out my pics of the restaurant. I apologize for the "I didn't think I'd need my camera so I didn't bring it, and had to use my iPhone instead" shots.