Nanjing 2010

After much hand-wringing and stressing over details (and coming to the conclusion that our male colleagues are a helluva lot more troublesome than the women will ever be), we made it to Nanjing. Two long days on the road to and fro, which included an impressive hour-long ride on the new express train between Shanghai and Nanjing (and back), and three days spent getting to know each other. It's been quite a journey.

Nanjing surprised us with its modern buildings, and our counterparts' warmth and hospitality was incomparable. Apparently, they just don't do things by halves there. Meal times consisted of at LEAST twenty different courses each time, and much of it was never finished anyway. And the many, many dishes of fatty braised pork...oh man! I think we just shaved a couple of years off our lives with the clogging of our arteries...Of course, we had to legitimize the trip with some charity work, and some team building thrown in. Coupled with all that, some were obviously only too pleased to show off their entire (newly acquired) Winter Wear Collection 2010.

All in, I think it was a good trip. I'm quite confident there'd been sufficient people signing up for the next trip, if we can muster up the budget for one...Vietnam 2011? :)