Bummer: Sun Club trip to Saipan canceled

Our office in Beijing has a gong hui (工会) called Sun Club. They get funding for various morale activities, and they provide employees a few thousand kuai each year to participate in team outings. So far, there have been trips to Guilin, Yunnan, Huangshan, and a number of other tourist places in China.

I was really looking forward to going on the trip to Saipan. My impression is that it is a backwater military outpost island, something like Guam. I'm not sure exactly why Chinese tourists would be so excited to go to a place like Saipan, but for me it would have been a real novelty. They supposedly have some good scuba diving to boot, so I'm sure it would have been fun.

Unfortunately, it looks like the the event didn't get enough confirmations, perhaps because it was a bit on the expensive side by local standards. Sun Club pays for the first CNY 2,500, and then the difference, in this case, probably CNY 3,000 additional, need to be paid by the employee. Officially, there need to be a certain number of people, maybe ten or so, before it can be considered an official Sun Club trip and receive official funding.

I'm glad that Sun Club was even considering this type of strange and out of the way destination, and I hope that we get the chance to go there in the future.

Posted at 12:01PM Nov 06, 2007 by erick in China  |  Comments[2]