Keith takes on Hong Kong

Back in February, Keith's boss, Daniel dissolved Vasayo and started III International.  It has been a crazy few months. Fifty percent of their customers are international now. Hong Kong is a good hub where every one in the Asia Pacific region can meet.  They held their first convention in Hong Kong a few weeks ago.  It was very crazy because it was just a couple of weeks after their convention here in Salt Lake.  His work schedule has been crazy since this all started back in February.  Luckily things are calming down a bit as he gets more offices set up in other countries, but it is so much more work than it used to be for him.

Keith was excited to see Hong Kong, but very anxious about the trip and how the convention would go.  Daniel didn't agree to let his agents come as interpreters until right before the trip.  One of the hardest parts about this new company for Keith was finding enough Mandarin speakers.  Thankfully he was able to find some pretty quickly and at least has a good start. 

I drove Keith to the airport first thing in the morning on Thursday June 8th. He flew from SLC to LA and then from LA to South Korea.  The flight from LA to South Korea was thirteen hours long.  He flew coach, but he said he was happy that it seemed to have more leg room than normal.  They had a little kit for him with slippers, head phones, blanket, pillow and water bottle. It had a sweet entertainment center as shown above.  He watched movies most of the time and wasn't able to sleep at all.  He said it was a very long flight! When he got to South Korea they had a couple of hours before their flight to Hong Kong.  That flight was four hours.  So when he finally arrived at his hotel in Hong Kong it was midnight there on Friday the 9th. Hong Kong is thirteen hours ahead of us.  He was exhausted and glad it was night time so he could go to sleep. 

On Saturday morning when Keith got up his Mandarin agents were just getting in.  They know the area so Keith met up with them and did a little sight seeing.  They went out to eat.  He said it was good food and it was nice that his agents could order for all of them. After that they went and looked at the market. He said there was a ton of live food that you could pick and they would kill it for you right there or you could take it home in a bag and kill it yourself.

After that Keith and Randy looked around.  Keith said there are tons of huge apartment buildings like this.  The bottom few floors are a market.  They set it up so people can shop daily and don't have to go far.

He zoomed in on the apartments to show how small they are.  

After that they took a train 45 minutes to get to down town Hong Kong. Keith said there are lots of tall buildings.

He said it was very clean and modern. 

On Sunday they started getting ready for the convention and Keith put in sixteen hour days from Sunday to Wednesday.  Here are his agents he brought with him and also Nadia and Keith Cheah from Malaysia.  He has been training Nadia, so he was happy to meet her.  He said they were very hard workers and helped him a lot.

These are three of his agents from Taiwan. During the event he was in charge of registration, which was a huge challenge with the language barrier, so he couldn't organize it the way he likes to.  They sent him a new file the morning of the event with everything changed and he was not happy about that.  He spent all day dealing with registration issues and working with the customers.  He said it was a mess, but the brand partners were understanding and appreciated how hard they were working.  Keith didn't even stop to eat so they would bring him food and tell him he worked to hard. Tuesday was Keith's birthday and he spent it working nonstop, poor guy.  We talked on a the phone a little bit most days.  He would call me when he was finally getting to his hotel room around midnight, which was early afternoon here.  We never talked long because he was so exhausted and needed to sleep as much as he could.  He had to be up early every morning, but he didn't sleep well anyway and usually woke up on his own before he needed to.  He was not a fan of the time change.  The event ended Wednesday and they felt like it was a success.

On Wednesday after the event Kim, the top brand ambassador, who this whole company was set up around, took all of the employees to a very nice, very expensive dinner down town. It was a thirteen course meal and took them a few hours to eat.

I thought thirteen courses sounded like a lot until I saw the portions.  They were all tiny.  This is squid with blood orange. 

He got Wagu beef.  Apparently, this is the most expensive beef at about $300 a pound (according to Wyatt).

This was a dessert with rhubarb ice cream and raspberry sauce. He liked the food and enjoyed getting to eat authentic food.

After the dinner on Wednesday Keith was able to sleep good and catch up a bit from the week. On Thursday Keith, Barkle, Taylor and Jacob took a tram ride up to see the Big Buddha. It was a twenty minute ride through a rain forest.  Keith said it was really cool.  You can see the tram cars in this picture.

Keith loved the rain forest. Once you arrived, the tram dropped you off in a village that he walked through with shops and statues.

This is the Big Buddha statue.  Keith wasn't thrilled when he saw all of the stairs they had to climb, but he did it just fine. People go there to pray and worship Buddha and remember their ancestors.  There are pictures and information on the inside of the Big Buddha of people who have died. 

There was statues of twelve Army Generals leading up to Buddha.

Right next to Big Buddha is a monastery of 10,000 Buddhas.

There were tons of statues of Buddha.

This one is the Buddha people pray to, it was right in the center of the room and it had kneeling benches around it.

They talked to this monk for a while. She was very nice and answered their questions.

This is the chapel where they worship and they weren't supposed to take pictures, but Barkle did anyway. 

Keith said the grounds of the monastery were so pretty!

This whole area is called the City of 10,000 Buddha's, here Keith is at the entrance to the city.

They took the tram back down.  It was rainy and foggy that day so they didn't have as good of a view as Keith would like. 

After that they went and saw the Hong Kong Temple.

They had Holiness to the Lord written in Mandarin and English. 

The mission home was across the street from the temple so they got to talk to some missionaries.

These are blessing drums. You get to choose one drum and Buddha will bless you with whatever drum you hit.  Keith chose Happiness.

They have all of these rubber duckie displays around Hong Kong. Keith said whenever he talked to a local person they would ask him if they had seen their ducks.  They thought that was pretty funny.

Keith was really glad he got some time to sight see.  When they were done exploring they were looking for somewhere to eat.  Keith had asked me to call Visa to tell them he was in Hong Kong because a lot of people don't accept discover.  I was surprised when I woke up the next morning and saw a charge for Five Guys on our Visa.  It was in the middle of the night so I figured it was Keith, but I was not expecting that.  He said they were all craving American food and were so excited when they saw a Five Guys in the Mall. 

We were so excited for Keith to get home Friday night.  We were planning on going straight from the battle to pick him up and then we got notified that his flight from LA had been canceled.  We were so disappointed.  Poor Keith spent hours in the airport trying to get a new flight, get his luggage and get a taxi to a hotel.  By the time he got to a hotel it was midnight on Friday and he had to be back at the airport at 4 AM.  He had been traveling for over twenty-eight hours by that point and was so ready to be home.  He got a flight Saturday morning.  I went and picked him up and the kids were so happy to have him home! 

Keith wanted to hang out with us, but he was so tired.  We sent him to bed and got all of his laundry done and things put away while he slept.  He woke up Saturday night for a couple of hours and played a game with us.  Caitlyn was home from work at that point and wanted to hear all about his trip.  We were so happy to finally have him home!