This latest business trip lasted 12 days and was a little different from past trips. Instead of conducting meetings in multiple cities in each country, we had centralized training camps in Malaysia and Taiwan. The result was that I did not have to spend as much time traveling from city to city and still got to meet with our managers and top sales people from each country.

Here are some things I learned:

• Take a picture of your hotel room number, because you WILL forget after a day of meetings.
• Laksa in Malaysia is not the same as in Singapore.
• Google Maps, especially Street View, is your friend. I saved so much time by looking up locations ahead of time and not having to wander around.
• Meeting up with friends (outside of work) keeps me grounded and accountable.
• Sulfur hot springs smell like durian, and now I know I don’t care for either.
• Traditional Taiwanese breakfast places are disappearing from Taipei Downtown.
• Google Translate can’t help you translate offline documents (at least not yet), particularly restaurant menus and subway maps.
• Next time I go to Yangmingshan, I bring a bike! Whether it’s paved or dirt, it’s bound to be a good ride all the way down.
• Ximending is worth checking out, especially for hard-to-find Japanese mecha models.
• New favorite dessert place, MeetFresh, tasty old-style shaved ice.
• Jetlag is more than just the physiological adjustment, there’s also the social, emotional and psychological.

For my last day of work on this trip, we started by leaving early for the airport on the way to Kota Kinabalu (KK). I had a stomachache (maybe from last night’s dinner), so I didn’t eat that much in the lounge for breakfast. Fortunately, it went away after a couple of hours.

After we landed in KK, a bunch of our distributors met us at the airport and drove us to our hotel where we were staying and also where we would be holding our training. We had a quick lunch meeting with our top distributor in East Malaysia, and then went to get ready for the training session. This turned out to be the only time I had to wear my suit for the entire trip. That was a big plus. I was commenting to Rebecca before flying out that the only time I ever wear a suit is for business in Asia, and weddings and funerals.

In the afternoon, I held a three hour training session, I think this is the longest business talk I’ve ever done. It went pretty well, and most of the audience stayed awake, J/K. Afterwards, my parents and I ditched the hotel food and walked outside to a nearby seafood restaurant which was quite good, and incredibly fresh.

After dinner, I still had to make one short appearance at the distributor meeting, and then I was done, no more meetings for the rest of the trip! Now, all I have to do is pack for the long trip back.

Today started off with a breakfast meeting in the hotel lounge, then off to the office for a full day of management meetings. We did take a break in the middle to go to a lunch meeting, and then it was back to the office for more meetings. We finished after 7pm, and finally headed off to dinner with one of our managers. She took us to our best meal of the trip yet at this local Malaysian restaurant called Melaka Street. They have a website, but doesn’t seem to be working, so I found this great review.

Once again, I was too hungry to take pictures of all the dishes, but here are a couple of dessert. Anyone who can name these local desserts, must have been to Malaysia or Singapore before.

Last night I was just too pooped to post, so this is a combined post from the last couple of days. Tuesday, Day 6 started with some more meetings in Singapore, then after lunch, we headed to the airport to fly to Penang. After checking into our hotel, we went straight to a dinner meeting, and then to a talk which I gave with my dad. It was a pretty good crowd and the meeting went well. But it did go kind of late, we didn’t get back to the hotel until almost 11pm.

The above is a picture out my Penang hotel window, which I took Wednesday morning. Penang is quite beautiful and relaxing compared to the rush of Singapore, but that sure wasn’t exemplified by our time there which was less than 24 hours. It might be nice to actually come back just to relax and enjoy the island one of these days.

In the morning, we had another breakfast meeting in the hotel. Then it was off to the airport to fly to Kuala Lumpur (KL). At the Penang airport, I finally got my first Coffee Bean of the trip as shown in the picture below. The great thing about Singapore and Malaysia is that they have lots of Coffee Bean’s as opposed to Taiwan which is flooded with ‘the burnt coffee place’. Unfortunately, I don’t always have the time to stop and grab a drink.

After arriving in KL, we went to check-in to our usual hotel, and then off to a lunch with our Malaysia managers. In the afternoon, we were back on the ‘meeting treadmill’, and finished off the day with a full course Chinese dinner with our senior managers and their families. One of our managers has 2 girls about the same age as our girls, so it was really cute to watch and talk to them during dinner.

After looking at the bill, I was quite surprised by what a great deal dinner was considering all the good food (although the service was ridiculously slow). Here’s a shot of the delicious roasted suckling pig: