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.

[Giant]

On our last trip to Taiwan in December, I picked up my folding bike, a Giant Halfway 7S at a bike shop near our office [map]. The irony is that when I went to get the bike, it was raining, so I couldn’t ride it back and ended up having to lug it all over downtown Taipei. At least the shop owner was nice enough to throw in the carrying bag.

My first time riding a folding bike was when I tried out Elijah’s a few months ago and I was totally hooked. It removes the inconvenience of having to use a bike rack, so that you can ride wherever and whenever you want, making bike rides much more spontaneous.

Folding bikes tend to be more popular outside the US, particularly  in Europe and Asia. Additionally, almost all bikes are made either in China or in Taiwan. I figured I could look for some good deals while I was there. Just walking around town, I saw a lot more people on bikes, with folding bikes making up the majority.

Most of what people were riding were Dahon and Giant branded folding bikes. After checking the prices at local bike shops, it was pretty clear that the best deal was with Giant (a Taiwanese company) rather than Dahon (a US company that manufactures its bikes in Taiwan). The Dahon bike prices were comparable to prices that I could get in the US, whereas the Giant folding bike prices in Taiwan were 30-40% cheaper than in the US.

I did get to ride my folding bike once while in Taiwan. Rebecca’s nephews took me on the trail that went around the bay in Danshui. And it was easily the most fun I had while I was there. I have to say that riding a bike in a new locale (as opposed to by car or on foot) really expands on the enjoyment and experience of travel for me.

As for the folding bike itself, it has been great. At first, I was looking into which parts to upgrade from the OEM components. But after making some minor fit adjustments and riding it some more, I am happy with it as is. The one thing I might change is the seat which is a bit too cushy, but for now, it works just fine.

Today, we got up early and headed for the airport as we left Taipei for Singapore. I took this picture of the famous hotel in Taipei (can’t remember the name at the moment) as we were driving to the airport. After a quick airline check-in, we went through immigration which had long lines, but fortunately were moving pretty quick. We had about an hour to grab some food in the lounge before our flight started boarding.

Fortunately, today’s flight was on a newer plane with power outlets, so I could use my notebook without worrying about battery life. I actually started off watching a Japanese film on the in-flight entertainment system called Tokyo Friends. And after that, caught up on some episodes of The Unit.

My aunt picked us up from the airport and gave us a ride to our hotel. And then it was straight into back to back meetings.

For dinner, my uncle took us out for some chili crabs and curry fish head which was all delicious, of which I completely stuffed myself silly. Feeling a little guilty, I hit the gym before bed for some stationary cycle action.

Today started off a bit rushed since I didn’t realize that our staff meeting was starting at 9. Got ready quickly and rushed out the door to grab breakfast on the walk into the office. I picked up a breakfast sandwich at a shop that I had taken the girls to back in July and surprisingly the shopkeeper remembered us and asked why I hadn’t brought the girls this time!

After a morning of staff meetings, we headed back to our hotel picking up some dumplings at Chou Pang Zhi along the way. Unfortunately, once again, I was in too much of a rush to take pictures of the delicious dumplings (you’ll just have to imagine them). We then headed out of downtown to Shenkeng where we were having our business training. The training went pretty well. I did two sessions which lasted about an hour. Check it out, I have my own placeholder:

Once we got back to downtown, my mom and I went to Dun Hua Night Market. She got some clothes for the kids and I got some fried pork ribs (I thought it was chicken :p, should’ve read the sign more closely).

I’m once again, on a business trip to Asia. This one will be a little bit shorter, just 10 days, and this time, I’m traveling with my parents.

Things didn’t start off too good with the lackluster combined airline lounge at LAX, but I guess I should have been happy that there was someplace to sit down with a power outlet. Because, we found out that our airline had switched us with an older plane, so that meant a 14 hour flight with no power. Sure, I was planning to get some work done, but mostly, just missed out on a bunch of movies that I had on my notebook. I ended up watching a soccer movie, Goal 2 (can you believe it’s a series) on the old-style entertainment system, catching 5 hours of sleep, and watching Sunshine on my notebook with just enough juice to finish an episode of CSI Miami.

We got into Taipei at 6 in the morning. So after checking into our hotel, I ditched the hotel breakfast, and went out to get some Taiwanese breakfast. Unfortunately, I was too hungry and forgot to take a picture before I scarfed it all down.

Then after a whole day of meetings, we went out to dinner at Din Tai Fung for some delicious soup dumplings.

I didn’t want to go to sleep too early and end up waking up at 4 in the morning from jetlag, so I decided to make a quick run to Guang Hwa Sang Cang (the Taipei tech market), but unfortunately, that proved fruitless. More often now, I am finding that most of the stuff I can get back in the US online cheaper.

Since I still had some time before going to bed, I decided to work off all that eating make use of the hotel gym. On the way back to my hotel room, I saw the following sign. I guess we can all use grammar check every once in a while.

Today was the first day that we actually ate breakfast in the hotel. We ended up meeting with one of our Taipei sales leaders for breakfast and figured that we might as well use our breakfast coupons for the past few days. For a western-style breakfast, it was alright, with a decent assortment, but just doesn’t compare to the great value and taste that we can get from a cheap Taiwanese breakfast shop.

We then headed into the office for some internal meetings with our managers. And then we joined in the company lunch with all of the employees. It’s always great to spend time with them in a more casual atmosphere. This time, we even had games, which was a lot of fun, and of course, my team beat Elijah’s. Afterwards, they had a cake to celebrate the birthdays for January, February and March, of which Elijah got to join in.

Afterwards, we got on the subway and headed up to Dan Shui to visit Gordon and his family along with Rebecca’s mom. Gordon and Clara recently expanded their ministry’s involvement in the community by opening up a cafe [slideshow] and lodge [slideshow] in the space where they recently built their church. They have also started and will be starting several businesses which serve the community, such as after-school programs for kids, music and arts training. It was a really relaxing time of fellowship after an intense week of meetings.

On our way back from the subway station, we stopped at Eslite bookstore to pick up some books and other items. We then returned to the hotel to pack before our last night in Taiwan.

In the morning, we headed out for another round of Taiwanese breakfast. Afterwards, we were walking around and came across a street market selling produce and housewares. We then took the subway and headed over to Guang Hwa Sang Cang to look around for electronics. It was raining really hard and we had to wander a round a bit before we decided to go into a Starbucks (at least they’re good for something, hehe) to ask for directions.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped off near Sogo and got some Ma-la Beef Noodle soup. We got the “little spicy”, and it was still really strong, but good.

After lunch, we headed out to Taichung for another round of meetings and speeches. We got to take the high-speed rail train again. Gotta love it, it’s so fast and stable, I can even read on it without getting motion sickness.

At one of our meetings, they welcomed us with an informal dragon dance, and for what I hope isn’t turning out to be a trend, sang karaoke and got Elijah and I to sing “You Are My Sunshine” again. After the food and singing, they invited us upstairs to receive massages and foot baths. Elijah enjoyed his, but I still think massages just aren’t my thing, but I let them do it out of courtesy.

After giving our speeches that night, we decided to take the bus back, which was supposed to be faster than the normal slow train (we couldn’t make the last HRT ride back). Unfortunately, the bus was going really fast and shaking all over the place so that I got completely car sick and for most of the 2-hour trip, I had to keep myself from throwing up or passing out. When we finally got to Taipei, I stumbled off the bus and had to ask our managers to go on home without us while I tried to recover from the vertigo. We then took a taxi ride back to our hotel, which, of course, made my motion sickness even worse. By the time I got back to the hotel room, it was all I could do to take a shower and pass out on my bed for the evening. Next time, we’re definitely taking the train.

For breakfast, we walked out to a place that makes breakfast sandwiches that are cheap and delicious. Beats McDonald’s McMuffins, yet another item we don’t have at home. We then went back to the hotel to rest and take care of some e-mails.

At lunch time, we had a meeting with all of our top sales leaders in Taiwan. It was held at our hotel, so we didn’t have to go anywhere. I gave a speech and then we enjoyed the meal along with some karaoke performances. They actually got Elijah and I to sing a song, but all the English songs were so old, the only one we recognized was one that my dad used to sing called, “You Are My Sunshine”.

In the afternoon, we were able to take a short break and head over to Din Tai Fung for an early dinner.

We finished off the evening with our speeches and afterwards took a lot of pictures with distributors. Fortunately, we were able to get back to our hotel at a decent time and get a good nights rest.

As a result of jetlag, I ended up waking at 4:30am, bright-eyed and hungry. Unfortunately, Elijah was still sleeping so I went over my speeches and did a little reading.

At 7am, we decided to ditch the hotel buffet and go out and get us some authentic Taiwanese breakfast. It was raining and cold, so we caught a cab. When we told our cab driver where we wanted to go, he thought we were nuts not to eat at the hotel and just laughed at us and showed us the bread that he was eating for his breakfast. I guess you have to be a foreigner to want to trade a breakfast buffet for common everyday breakfast food, but that’s the thing, it’s not common for us, so that’s why we had to go out and get it.

After breakfast, we changed into our suits (aka “monkey apparel”) and headed over to the office for our first day of meetings. We started out by taking Taiwan’s newly opened High Speed Rail Train, which was very cool because I’ve been looking forward to ride since it was first announced several years ago. It beats taking the plane out of convenience and it’s almost as fast. The added bonus is that I normally get motion sickness on trains, but this one was moving so darn fast and was so steady that I didn’t have any problems, even while reading.

In Tainan, we met with one of our sales leaders where he treated us to some local noodles, pastries and fruit. Next, we went to Kaohsiung to meet another leader who treated us to more fruit, and then took us to a restaurant that served some pretty unique and authentic Taiwanese dishes (anyone ever tried ‘sauteed dried cauliflower’, it was actually pretty good).

We ended the day by giving our speeches to a room full of sales people and customers, and then had to rush to the airport in order to catch the last flight back to Taipei. I think the pilot must have had something to prove against the new train, ’cause that is the fastest I can remember flying from the south to the north.

For this trip to Asia, Elijah is actually going with me for his first time on a business trip. We are going to visit 9 cities in 14 days! It’s going to be a lot of meetings, speeches, and more meetings.

Unfortunately, this time, the day before we flew out, I got seriously sick with a killer sore throat. I was out for most of Saturday just trying to get some semblance of health so that I wouldn’t be suffering entirely on the flight. On Sunday, I was feeling a little bit better, but still quite sick. We decided to take an afternoon flight so that when we got to Taiwan, we would still have one night to recover before our meetings started.

We got to the airport early enough to check-in and hoping to get some rest in the business lounge. But turned out that the lounges were under construction and all we got was a lousy $15 coupon to show for it. I wasn’t about to spend that much on McDonald’s, so got something at Sushi Boy, which turned out to be almost just as nasty. Thankfully, Rebecca had prepared some pears for me to snack on. So not only was there no lounge without anything to snack on except crummy fast food, we didn’t have any wifi connection either. Fortunately, we were able to hookup our laptops to our pdaphones and use the EVDO connections.

Then, when we went to check the info board on our flight, we got conflicting information from two boards, and so we figured we might as well go to the gate, and we found out that the flight was actually delayed for an hour! Not a good start, considering I was already sick to begin with.

Once we got on the plane, things started to get better. Fortunately, we were able to get seats in the upstairs section, which is quieter and roomier. Actually, we got the last row of the upstairs, so it was a little bit close to the galley and we could hear them preparing stuff throughout the flight, but still better than downstairs in the main cabin.

My plan for the flight was to try and get as much rest as possible and try to break my cold, regardless of the consequences of jetlag. They wouldn’t turn off the cabin lights until after dinner which was the first 2 hours of the flight and then they would turn the lights back on 2 hours before we landed at which time they would serve breakfast.

So at the beginning of the flight, I watched Jackie Chan in Rob-B-Hood (not bad, entertaining) while eating dinner. Was then able to sleep for most of the time in between about 7 hours. And during breakfast, I watched a Japanese movie Udon, which is great if you like Japanese food and culture.

After landing, we got through immigration pretty quickly and got our bags without much of a wait. The office sent a car to pick us up to take us to our hotel. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the hotel, it was too late to try and head over to Din Tai Fung and get some dumplings. I was hungry from not eating much on the plane, so we headed out to find something to eat. At first, we saw McDonald’s and then a couple of coffee shops, and just as we were about to resign ourselves to western food in Taipei, we found a potsticker shop, where we got a light dinner for the both of us for less than $5. Gotta love Taiwan.

Afterwards, we picked up some drinks from 7-11 (another beautiful feature of Taiwan, the 7-11s actually sell things that are useful, and not just sugar filled drinks and junk food). We then headed back to the hotel to get some sleep before our long day of meetings.