Picking up after work on Wednesday, the day after our dinner with the local officials… Sam, Austin, one of my coworkers fluent in Mandarin, and I went in search of some bins for a project Sam is working on. Logically this being China you don’t go to the Home Depot or shop Online, no you go to the bin store, a single store that sells nothing but plastic bins of every shape and size. The one we chose to inquire at, yes there is more than just one within a 5 miles radius, was a decent size by American standards but tiny by Chinese. This place would order bins for you or you could buy their stock, a little farther away was a bin warehouse I was told, where any plastic bin used around the world could be found in its original pre-screen-printed state. We got some price quotes and a catalog and hustled off to our next task, finding a floor squeegee.
We went to the safety supply shop we assumed would carry such an item, but were disappointed to discover otherwise. Hell the people there couldn’t even figure out what we were talking about even after drawing a picture and describing it in mandarin, at one point they brought us a mop which was almost too funny as one of the things that was told to them in mandarin was “not a mop.” Other than this lack of understanding the store was pretty cool. Has mat suits, gas masks that look like the one worn by my favorite creature/human in Pink Floyds “The Wall,” gloves to protect you from molten steel, stuff you could only normally find on the internet or in a magazine in the US sold in a store front. On the flip side the idea of keeping a store clean is foreign in China. The whole place was covered in dust, things not touched in months showed their lack of interest in the thick layers of grime accumulated while those with more recent movement only began to show a hint of grey. I would venture to say this is because Chinese people don’t care if it’s dusty, while a dirty store in the US may turn a customer off, in China it’s so normal they don’t seem to even notice.
After that adventure we grabbed dinner at the “small hat noodle place” and downed a few beers. We ventured over to pool for a few hours and I headed back early around 10:30pm, I was told the next day Austin had started betting with the same local guy he always does and managed to lose about $50usd, too many beers never helps.
Thursday and Friday came and went uneventfully, I got a little packing done but mostly just relaxed because I was tired; I keep staying up late watching movies and TV, damn internet. Woke up Saturday and took the high speed train to the airport in Guangzhou, we met a nice guy on the train named Johnbow who does quality control for Britania, a Brazilian home appliance company very similar to my old company Euro Pro although much larger.
Now I am at the airport writing this so I figure I should mention where we are going. We fly from here to Hanoi, Vietnam, and then spend some days motorcycling in the mountains of the north. We then head down south to Ho Chi Minh City and hit the beach along the way. After that we bus it to Angkor Wat in Cambodia to see the temples before flying back to China from phenom penh. I will try to take a lot of photos and try to post along the way. Hope you enjoy.
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