Hello from Zhuhai!

Day 1

Totum Sport have 4 representatives in Zhuhai for the Soccerex China event, one of the biggest football conferences in the world. Our CEO, John, arrived into Hong Kong on Friday and we followed 2 days later.

 

Marie and I (Michael – the Marketing Exec here at Totum) met at Noon on Saturday at the Metro station in Sunderland and didn’t get to our hotel in Zhuhai until 20:00 Sunday evening. The travelling included Train, Aeroplane, Ferry and Taxi.

 

We arrived to Newcastle airport for 1pm and we were greeted with the unfortunate news that our flight was delayed by 30 minutes, no big deal as it still gave us 90 minutes transfer time in London Heathrow. We arrived at Heathrow at 16.30 and met up with our Head of Science, Roger. Then it was time to board our flight and cross the 7 time zones to Hong Kong. The flight was a long one, 12 hours, leaving London Heathrow at 18:40 on Saturday and arriving into Hong Kong at 13:40 Sunday.

 

That, however, wasn’t the end of the travels. Unfortunately we missed the 14:15 ferry so we had to wait for the 17:00 ferry, which was, as you guessed it, delayed. The ferry crossing to Zhuhai, which is on the coast of mainline China is a 70 minute ferry from Hong Kong Airport, the sea was rough and the weather very wet. We arrived in Zhuhai after a full days travel, we hadn’t seen our suitcases since Newcastle Airport, when you board the ferry at Hong Kong Airport this is classed as a transit so you don’t leave the airport and neither does your luggage. We were confused as to where our luggage would be, we were expecting a carousel like you’d find in an airport but to our surprise all of the suitcases were put into several large yellow containers, these containers were crane-lifted off the boat and onto shore, once open it was a free for all to get your suitcase, crazy!

 

We cleared immigration and a Chinese stamp was added to our passports. We arrived at the hotel at 20:00 Zhuhai time, that’s 15:00 hours GMT – completing 27 hours worth of travelling.

 

 

Day 2 

The event is tomorrow so we need to make sure everything is set up and prepared. The event will be taking place at the fantastic Zhuhai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. We are on stand #182 and our CEO, Head of Science and Nutritionist have a speaking slot at the event where they’ll be sharing everything on nutrition, hydration and Totum Sport. Stay tuned to our social media channels for exclusive shots and behind the scenes of our seminar. All of the 1000 attendees at Soccerex will receive a Totum Sport leaflet and a sachet of Totum Sport in the official Soccerex attendee packs, and the Totum Sport logo also appear on every lanyard at Soccerex, how cool is that!?

 

Today has been spent running through the finer details so the following two days run as smoothly as possible. The stand is all set-up and looks fantastic *big sigh of relief*, so keep an eye out tomorrow for pictures – we’re keeping everything under wraps as we don’t want to give anything away today! Everything from the stand, to the Totum Sport video has been double and tripled checked, and now we can’t wait for the event. Be sure to check back on our blog tomorrow to find out how the first day of the conference went!