Where's Daddy?

I was able to wrap up an extremely busy travel year with a 8 day trip over to Asia. So while Grandma, Mommy and the boys had fun in 20 inches of snow, Daddy was through 3 of the largest cities in the world. The trip started with a 12 hour flight to Tokyo followed by a 3 hour flight to Beijing. I was only there for one night, worked all the next day and then immediately left for Shanghai. While most of the time was spent working, I was able to see a little of the city. The only city I have ever seen that even comes close to the size of the city and buildings is in Manhattan .

This is the Bund in Shanghai, old buildings and the Nanjing Road on one side of the river and huge, modern buildings on the other.

I am not really a very tall guy, though I wish I was, but walking down the very busy Nanjing Road, I noticed that I could see above the crowd. I was tall, it was all just relative to where you are from! I called the wife that night and told her we may need to move to China for my own ego. (She said no, can you believe that?)  I took the 460 KM an hour Maglev train and then had another flight back to Beijing for one more day of work, but first got take a trip out to The Great Wall.

I later found out that it is extremely rare to be able to visit the Wall when no people are there. This particular day there were very few people and I got the chance to walk a good distance and see one of the most interesting spots in the world.

 

I left China later that night for Seoul, Korea. It was extremely cold, so I did not go into the city, but did get the chance to enjoy a Korean specialty because of a very kind invitation from local managers.

Korean BBQ. With Kimchi, sizzling pork, spicy fish soup, sitting on the floor and 15 people around the table. This was all that was left of an incredible amount of food. And this was lunch!

After that, it was on to Nagoya, Japan for one more day of work.

Then I took the bullet train, also called the Shinkansen to Osaka, with a Bento box for lunch and a flight back home via Seattle.

Waiting for me at the arrivals area was the best thing I saw on the entire trip, my two best buddies and my beautiful wife. It was nice to be home and wonderful to be finished traveling for the year!