Your best ever work trip

A week in Lima, and a week in Buenos Aires - both bloody amazing, and I doubt I'd ever have made it to either place under my own steam.

I went to athens. Stayed at that super sw**ky famous hotel i have forgotten. The name of. Got slapped on the arse by a greek minister. There were biwls of free marly reds on the meeting room table. Flew home.

Driving from San Francisco to New Orleans in a fully laden van to set up a trade show there, not that long after Hurricane Katrina.

Went to Japan to train our XCo on summit which was an hour slot but stayed in Osaka for three days and then went to Tokyo for a couple in amazing hotels, then bobbed over to Shanghai (less fun tbf). Also a week in San Francisco for a one day mediation, including one day where I got to Alcatraz on the first boat and knew that if I left the tourists at the first briefing point I’d probably have the place to myself for 15 mins, which I did and was both spooky and class.

A week in Cayman in the good season. The Partner decided we needed at least a day off to acclimatise before briefing a witness and he decided to do his day in NY - so the bliss of business class and a day's R&R without needing to appear to be working or making small talk. Did a diving course, was ace.

Close second was Belgrade the year after the NATO bombing campaign ended, boy was that place crazy.

went to cayman for 48 hours, 24 hours of which were a bank holiday.

then to bahamas for 24 hours. then to new york for 48 hours of conference then 48 hours of having a very nice time.

client marketing trip to Barcelona when I was in PP, last minute replacement for an “important person” , I’ve never rated the kind of lux involved, General Counsel for an International bank was one of the guests to set the “lux” level

watched Barca as VIP , played golf on a PGA tour level course, 5* hotel and restaurants all the way/ every day

and just as we were heading home Icelandic volcano intervened and the trip got extended 5 days

Poor sods, their marketing fund for the rest of the year was completely blown away

Actually I once got paid to go and do a week's intensive boot camp for the NY new starters. Stayed on central park and got given £150 a day food and entertainment budget. I drank and ate every night in an irish pub and soent the afternoons sightseeing. (The intensive training was morning only so the us newbies could still have time to excise the whole pound of flesh.)

I have to choose between a day in a data room in Cardiff and a week of reviewing loan files in Belfast. Neither was much fun.

Heh. Reminds me of an email I once sent to the trainees at a former firm

Have any of you capacity to fly to Monaco tomorrow get some docs physically signed by a client at about 5pm then fly back the next morning? All you have to do is get the docs signed so you can do what you like after that obvs on expenses for accom, dinner etc.

I've got capacity Buzz!

Excellent! If you've got capacity to do that you've also got capacity to spend tomorrow in a data room in Slough which is what I actually need you for.

Did you actually do that Buzz?

Might have done....

Wang’s never forgiven you ;)

marvellous. i must remember that.

Taiwan was the best - hospitality was fantastic.

Saudi was the worst. Hotel was nice enough, but that's it.

A week in Chicago, a few similar trips to Hong Kong and Singapore, pretty much everywhere in Europe. All on expenses.

When I got home the wife and kids said 'Where are we going on holiday this year?'

Nowhere, I felt like saying.

buzz was i present?!

Two days in new york for internal meetings, slammed the Virgin Upper stand up bar on the way out, went straight to meetings after landing, completely smashed, with loads of uptight americans ofc. Then rolled on to the bars of midtown and won my boss’s business class flight back off him by, er, starting a conversation with some models at the bar after he’d dared me. I asked them in my best british accent if it was bar service or table service in this place. Easy money. Lots of other stories that don’t bear repeating tbh

This was a much later Iceland trip Tuz. It did involve MAS though.

oh god. i want to vom just thinking about that.

holy fook. i just googled. check the pic with the yellow tie. WHAT THE fook HAPPENED???

Heh. The years haven't been quite so kind there have they?

errr. no.

The bird he was with when DP, MT and I were with him was well fit.

he had ALL the fit girls

Went to Vienna for a closing ball. Some Viennese palace. 300 odd people. Everyone in black tie. Canapes, champagne, sit down meal. Everyone who worked on the deal was announced and got a round of applause. Hit the Vienna nightclubs after midnight and back to hotel at 5.30 a.m. The three room suite I had in Hotel Bristol was not worth it. Was so wrecked that missed alarm and my fellow junior associate had to get the hotel staff to go in and wake me which involved four of them shaking my mattress.

This was mid-2000s and I was only a couple of years qualified. Nothing as good as that ever again.

If it had been a few years earlier could have brought Charlotte and Lisa along too...

guy I trained with who was a bit of a LADLADLAD managed to have a threesome with two italian girls in a hotel in geneva while on a DD trip

RC, I would NOT have enjoyed that. Black tie dinner sounds awful.

Think, for sheer surrealz, going at last minute to deep south Louisiana to negotiate with some technical engineering company. Being bumped from business to first, then doing the deal in 6 hrs (we'd budgeted for 3 days) so going on the absolute lash, including shooting a variety of assault rifles and desert eagles etc. The a night in New Orleans and home. Brutal.

Best sounding one is day trip to Kabul on New Year’s Eve.

Strangest was maybe Guam. I knew I would be locked in a room on a base for the three days I was there and would not see anything so I got straight off the very long flight, dumped my bags at the hotel went down to the beach and hired a kayak and a guide to go swimming with turtles for an hour. Came back, showered, changed and then straight into work meetings for three days solid.

To be honest, looking back, some of the most fun were not very glamorous. General client piss ups in the late 90s in average hotels around the UK where the behaviour of drunkenness and sexual harassment would cause the RoF news page to implode nowadays. I still regret not closing the deal with a partner who was recently divorced and clearly up for it. But I had a stupid “do not bang anyone at work’ policy which I really regret now. I have just googled her and still would.

I used to go to Watford (actually London North) Employment Tribunal quite a lot back in the day. Is that any good?

If it had been the Croydon one, that would have worked.

I tell clients coming to Croydon that the bus stop opposite is where that bloke got stabbed to death while holding his 6-year old daughter's hand.

Sometimes they think that maybe settling isn't such a bad idea.

Maybe that's what José's lawyer told him....

Had some awesome "global law conferences" when I was a corporate in-houser. Stellenbosch, Charleston, Bangkok, Sydney, Napa Valley, Bordeaux (GC liked his wine!)....to name a few. Mastered the art of attending morning session, asking some questions, then going back to bed for a few hours.

I visited Croydon ET several times in a previous job but not as advocate. Difficult to decide which was shitter but I think I'd probably prefer to go to Watford rather than Croydon if given a choice.

London Central ET is a veritable dream location by comparison.

Actual overseas trips done on my employer's coin:

Prague

Budapest

Amsterdam

Cannes

But these were all 20+ years ago.

But I had a stupid “do not bang anyone at work’ policy which I really regret now. I have just googled her and still would.

heh. get back in touch. never too late. no ragrets :-)

Buzz i assume u went to iceland at the same time as the rest of the london restructuring market. Michael Lewis' book Boomerang has a very funny chapter in all that

This trip was a few years later Wango, catching up with the people we worked with at the time the London restructuring market descended on Reykjavik. Weirdly enough at that earlier time one of my then partners ended up having dinner sharing a table with Michael Lewis and Bjork. fooker sent me a text telling me what a great time he was having while I was pulling all nighters in London fooking about with an Icelandic bank's assets. Arsehole.

"Do not bang anyone at work" is better considered guidance rather than a strict rule tbh.

The firm I worked at contrived to go to rekjavik and draft them an insolvency law. Several 10s of 000s later the icelandic govt said, in the style of python "go away, we've already got one you see."*

*they then had to find one of the three people who could translate it from runes

I went to INSOL in Sydney and it was absolutely shite. The Sydneysiders have ruined what used to be a good drinking town by putting loads of absurd rules around licensing. Not allowed to hop bars after midnight or 1am, and a mate of mine got chucked out of a work do for dropping her wine glass ffs. Get a fvcking grip, australia, you’re supposed to be a drinking culture,

Sydney would easily win the title for world's most over hyped city were it not for the convenient fact of melbourne

In the early '10's partner did not want to go to Beijing for negotiations so I went. Met the client in the hotel lobby and we head for four days of negotiating with a very big Chinese state company (big lunch with fried pigeon). We achieved a handshake on Friday afternoon and agreed to sign the Tuesday after (with an enormous signing ceremony - different story) so I got to stay over the weekend.

Client wanted to take the opportunity to go jogging on the Chinese wall and invited me to join him on Sunday. I spent the Saturday visiting all must-sees in Beijing and looking for a pair of size 10.5 running shoes. That proved to be quite a challenge. Late at night on Saturday I found a pair of probably size 9 or 9.5. On Sunday morning we were driven to the Chinese wall and did some jogging (and a lot of stair climbing actually).

It was a lovely trip on which I really learnt and experienced a lot.

Client is in jail now...

That's a pretty disappointing trip to Oz Laz. You'd have expected the true Aussie drinking spirit typified by this guy

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/urbwwT3feDo

Mauritius has to be up there, although I didn't get a lot of beach time (about 10 mins, iirc). It was still Mauritius. And I got to meet up with an old friend who had moved there a few years before.

Heavy drinking with Rusky clients in Zurich would probably be memorable if I had had less vodka.

Paris is always good for coming out of a sh1tty day staring at conference room walls to be confronted with a stunning view of the Eiffel Tower and an amazing dinner.