Day Eight - Thai pop songs

A few comments on Chinese living…the toilets in the factories that we visited yesterday were basically just porcelain holes in the ground...the same for management and the workers. Kind of a contrast to the nice hotels we are staying in. Speaking of the hotels, even in the nicest hotels, Chinese beds are just a little softer than a piece of plywood…not sleeping very well in China yet! Another surprising thing about China is the lack of beggars. In a little over a week now, I have only seen one person begging for money in either Hong Kong or China. The standard of living is extremely low and housing is not very desirable but the people do not beg for money…they are a hard working people. A note about the factory workers is that they work very tedious and detailed jobs...sometimes repeating the exact same task for 10 hours a day but they are all very nicely dressed…almost always in nice jeans and a nice top…it is also funny to see them coming and going from the factory’s talking on cell phones. Another interesting tidbit is that there is virtually no police or military presence anywhere, which probably explains why no one follows traffic laws! However, all of our factories are behind guarded gates that open when we pull up and close behind us.

We had a working lunch today and the supplier brought in McDonald’s!!! I had a double cheeseburger and fries (couldn’t drink the coke because it had ice in it). For dessert, instead of an apple pie, Micky D’s has the same type of thing but pineapple and a taro fruit instead of apple or cherry. Breakfast this morning was my usual…hash browns, pancakes, eggs, and banana bread…basically the same thing every morning…all the hotels have the standard American food to go along with everything else. Dinner was and interesting event. We are staying in a Chinese Resort area, ate dinner at a Thai restaurant on the hotel grounds, listening music during dinner by 2 people who were Thai natives, trying to sing American pop songs...see photo. The other picture was taken after dinner was basically over...it only shows about half the dinner...nothing unusual tonight, we were not with suppliers so it was mainly normal stuff.