Sanya, Hainan Company Retreat

I'm sure some of you are disappointed that I haven't been blogging more regularly seeing as we are in China and probably doing some cool things. But, the truth is that most of the time life is just normal and we are saving all the "cool things" for when we have visitors. We did take a great trip last weekend to Hainan so I thought I would blog about it.

The LEK office in Shanghai does a mandatory retreat every year and we happened to be here for it and I am so glad because it was awesome! Way better than any party the LA office throws (sorry LA LEKers). Everyone from the office took a weekend trip to Hainan, which is a little island south of Hong Kong and similar to Hawaii. The hotel was gorgeous and so was the scenery.

Here we are riding the shuttle from the airport to the hotel. Riding through the towns you could tell they are very rundown but the hotel had everything we needed so there wasn't really a reason to venture out.




There were some seriously heavy rains while we were there but the weather was still warm and we didn't mind it so much.

AND, we took a little trip to the local hospital while we were there. Our first night there Chris woke me up at 4am saying he had been having some serious stomach pains for the last few hours. He decided to see if the pain would subside on its own but in the morning he wasn't feeling any better. We found out there was a nurse on staff at the hotel so she came along with a translator to check him out. We thought it was his appendix and our biggest fear was that it would burst but after some poking and prodding the nurse said it wasn't the appendix and probably not serious but suggested we still go to the hospital.

The hotel generously provided another employee to come with us to the hospital and we're so glad they did because there is no way we could have figured this place out on our own. It's hard to tell in this picture but the hospital was ummmm, not clean, I'll just say that. And not private either; in this room where Chris was examined there were at least 5 other people just waiting their turn.

This doctor also agreed that it wasn't his appendix but rather his intestine was inflamed and he suggested an infusion. They LOVE infusions at this place! When we walked upstairs there were rooms full of people hooked up to IV's just hanging out getting medicated. We weren't comfortable with this suggestion and we requested pills instead. Chris was feeling much better by the time we left the hospital but the real magic happened when we got back to the hotel and Chris saw a soccer ball. He started playing soccer as if he hadn't been in any sort of pain for the last 12 hours...strange how that happened.

Thankfully, we got to enjoy the rest of our trip without anymore hiccups. It was fabulous and I'm ready for another vacation like that.

So here is a weird China thing. We tried to watch some TV while it was raining and discovered that the government had canceled entertainment for the day in memory of those killed by the mudslide. The mudslide was a tragic event but it was still strange to us that the government had the power to cancel TV.