January 13, 2010: Fortunately, We Weren't Boarded

Another day in Hong Kong and another series of adventures . . . but even though Ross and I set sail on a ferry, and spotted a cool-looking junk, we didn't see any pirates. We did see a lot of pirate activity, though, with the constant assault of street vendors offering to sell us "copy" watches and "copy" handbags. And that doesn't even count the vendors who weren't quite so honest with their fake iPods and Rolex watches. Or the occasional "copy" games that were stacked on the tables in the street market.

The day was filled with printer meetings starting with lunch with GPI -- the printer handling everything from Munchkin Quest to Nanuk to Frag Gold Edition -- and closing with a meeting with Topway (they printed Lord of the Fries for us a couple of years ago). The GPI meeting was very useful and covered everything from Munchkin reprints to a detailed discussion on the current status of Cthulhu Dice and Zombie Dice. I love meeting with Mike and David from GPI, and I'm a little sad that I won't get to sit down with them again until March (PAX East takes place close enough to GPI's US office that Steve and I are going to take a little time to swing by and visit). I know that meetings with printers doesn't sound like an exciting way to spend a day in Hong Kong, but not every hour of our day in the city can be devoted to getting lost and buying tea and toys. (I should write about the toy shopping experience in Hong Kong; I suspect that some of you love toys as much as I do.)

Today is another round of meetings, this time with a rep from the factory that produced Revolution! and an engineer who worked on one of Steve's favorite toys, the marbleous Chaos Machine. And around those meetings Ross and I will work our way through the 2,000 booths at Hong Kong Toy Fair.