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Robbie back to Asia Part#1

September 18, 2008

Sept. 8th, I was off to Seoul Korea thankfully on a direct flight from Vancouver.

This was my first trip to Korea and I was pretty excited, as my dad had worked in Ulsan for multiple years on a Hyundai project and had told me some stories in the past.  Also I hadn’t been back to Asia for over a year and was also therefore looking forward to this trip.

It was about an hour drive from the airport to the Hotel.  The event was being held at the JW Marriott in Seoul.  Sept. 10th & 11th was spent with meetings at the regional ICANN Meeting in Seoul, Korea. These next two days were extremely productive in terms of business as well as networking.  It was definitely good to see known faces and friends at this event. I have been to multiple regional ICANN meetings in the past, but this in Seoul was by far one of the best attended Asian regional meetings I have seen.

Sat. Sept. 13th we (Karim and myself) were then off to Beijing.  Ahh Beijing, after having been there multiple times I was extremely excited to go again this time around.  I hadn’t been there since February 2006 and having read so much about Beijing and the Olympics I was quite excited.

We arrived at the new terminal 3 airport.  What a difference.  Everything was well organized and impeccably clean.  Immigration was quick and efficient and we had a car waiting at the airport for us.  Then it was off towards the hotel through which seemed an entirely new Beijing to me.  Hardly any traffic, very little honking, … simply well organized.  Only later did I find out that during the Olympic 2008 the government enforced the rule of “Odd” and “Even” Day driving, meaning if you have an Odd License Plate Number you are only permitted to drive every other day, so the traffic was flowing and we got to the China World Hotel fairly quickly.

Saturday evening we then met up with Alex, a very close friend of mine, who I have now known for multiple years.  He founded ChinaSpringBoard in Beijing a few years back and seems to be doing well.  It is always good to see Alex, especially as he knows great places for food and partying.  As a result Karim and I didn’t get back to the hotel until early in the morning.

Alex was able to get us into the Olympia Park on Monday so we naturally spent half of our day there.  Thanks again so much for everything Alex!  We also stopped by Coca-Cola which was pretty cool!

Tuesday was then spent with more business meetings, which went extremely well.

Wednesday I was off to XIAMEN, China.  It was a quick 2 h 40 min. flight and no hassle.  XIAMEN was not what I expected.  Apparently XIAMEN has the highest living standard in China.  Very clean and tropical.  Met up Leona in XIAMEN as she had the same companies to meet as I did, so why not combine them and utilize her language skills.   The meetings so far have gone extremely well and thankfully Leona was with me, otherwise they would not have been as fruitful.

One more meeting today and then tomorrow I am off to Tokyo, Japan!

Posted in: Travel