Happy to check off days 4 and 5

On Tuesday morning we traveled to Bengbu.  We took a train, visited 2 factories and settled into our hotel for the night.  It was a Howard Johnson and I was very excited as I had heard such good things about them overseas, plus finally Bengbu had an American hotel!  The room was clean and the hotel was beautiful so on first inspection I gave it 2 thumbs up.  However, it all went downhill from there.  First the club where you normally go to get water, drinks, snacks, etc was closed...seems the hotel opened 6 months ago, but they never opened the club.  We go to eat in the hotel restaurant (which is Chinese) and they gave us an iPad to order.  We ordered 18 things...very typical, but they brought 2-3 of about every option.  We are not sure what happened, but we had enough food to feed a small army and a lot of sleep deprived laughing because it just kept coming.  Thankfully it was pretty cheap, so the total bill was just under $300.  So, we go talk to the manager to ask for them to open the gym at 6 vs 7, since we had to leave the hotel at 8.  Manager agrees and we say goodnight.  During the night they turned what little air that was blowing off, so our rooms averaged 25-28 C.  Plus they were having some type of street fair with loud music and shouting about a mile outside of the hotel, but it sounded like a circus in our rooms.  Needle ss to say I was up about every hour and even did my Slim in 6 video before going to the gym at 6.  Well, 5 of the 6 of us get to the gym at 6am, but nothing has power.  They can't figure out what is wrong, so we all did some type of creative exercise.  Jennifer (who is much younger than me and in great shape) and I did the 100 countdown someone had given me last year and it kicked my butt.  I will give the banana bread and bowl of watermelon I had for breakfast 2 thumbs up.  Due to traffic and a bit of car questioning, we basically ran to our train.  Two hours later we are in the town of the factory.  We have a lazy susan Chinese lunch with the factory owners (where I finally got some glass noodles!) and then tour the facility...which was decent.  Back to the train station and off to Haugzhou, which is also known as The West Lake which is a very tourist area.  I haven't actually seen the area as it was dark when we got in and dark when we left, but they do have a Las Vegas type fountain show in the lake across from the hotel.  We had teppanyaki for dinner, which turned into about 8 courses and 11pm.  Needless to say we had a lot of sleepy heads at out 6am wheels up on day 4.  Especially since the Hyatt too turns what little air that blows off at night!

Day 4 consisted of a 45 min drive to the train station, egg mcmuffin for breakfast, a 2.5 hour highspeed train ride (so about 500 miles) SouthWest, then an hour car ride (which was one of my worst yet) to the factory.  After a factory introduction, we went for a traditional Chinese lunch where I literally had to spit my soup out in order not to get sick!  Sometimes that inland is iffy for food, but the cabbage and broccoli were delicious.  We got back to the factory for the tour and it all went downhill (luckly it wasn't one of my factories).  So after touring, reviewing our samples and sitting some ground rules for what will have to happen for us to do business, we were back on our merry way...1 hour car ride, 2.5 hour highspeed train (in which my VP finally decided to discuss my upcoming line review for the entire time and all I wanted to do was nap.  I will forever wonder why he waits for the final week before the review to start questioning everything) and 1.5 hour car ride due to traffic. One car got a bit lost and that on top of tired guys and a bad factory made for some upset people.  So, we split for dinner.  I actually had an amazing lasagna dish and delicious salad.  All in all I'm ready to say goodnight on this day!