One of the best perks of coming to Asia so far is the Asia-Pacific-wide offsite in Phuket, Thailand. Basically the offices of Asia span from India to Australia to Hong Kong to Japan, it’s very difficult for the members of the different office to form a bond together. Usually working through email or phone, all the bankers’ relationships are terse and superficial. Every year, the division would have a regional offsite at a location in Southeast Asia because it is the center for most of the divisions. This year, the firm picked a tropical resort on the Northern part of the island of Phuket. A few reasons why Phuket was chosen: 1) it’s more centrally located to most offices, 2) it’s incredibly cheap given it is rainy season, and 3) everyone would enjoy themselves on the beach.
Despite being rainy season, the weather last weekend was absolutely perfect. Over 300 people flew into the island on various different flights. Interesting fact, the firm couldn’t fit everyone onto the direct flights because of the special “business continuity” rules. There are a set number of bankers that can be on the plane on the same time. Just in case the plane crashes, the firm would not lose an entire office. The weekend was PACKED with activities. Friday night reception was held at the courtyard by the pool, where everyone mingled with all the different offices. Being new to the Hong Kong office, I was delighted to have been able to meet quite a few new faces in the Hong Kong offices as well as many of my counterparties in India and Australia. The Australian bankers are totally hilarious. Chill and funny, no wonder everyone wants to be at Australia. While many people decided to venture out to the streets of Patong (to be explained later), I stayed and hung out at the beach. The beach under the stars at night was one of the most gorgeous views and Phuket’s beach was no different. However, we could not go into the water because the waves were too strong. There were guards on the beach making sure no one goes in.
On Sat, everyone woke up bright and early for their morning bonding activities, where everyone had to pick an activity of their choice. While I ended up with my second-choice of go-carting, it was by far the best activity of the choices. It turns out there are heats and waves and races. Put 60 competitive male bankers in a go-cart with races involved and you’ll get the most intense go-carting experience of all times. The MDs and Directors literally ran people off the road, driving aggressively and bumping into anyone that’s in their way. One of the first-year girl’s cart almost got ran into the barrier by one of the MDs’. Everyone got so into the races and the competitive tension was super high. Definitely the most fun activities of them all. It totally went above and beyond my expectations.
Immediately after the morning activity and lunch, we gathered on the beach for “IBD Olympics”, where everyone got divided into 16 teams of 25 and battled each other in all sort of random camp bonding activities. Definitely got competitive as well, where the head of IBD Asia pulled me and another girl onto the floor trying to pull out our flags (during a flag football type of activities). At first, I thought it would be corny and annoying, but turned out everyone got super into the activities and it was a great experience. Unfortunately, our team, the Grey Goose, did not win. All good fun though. During the activities, the leader of our group, head of Corp Fin, decided that we needed to steal the flags of other teams and we stole the battle flag of Head of IBD’s group. Everyone totally had a lot of fun.
After the activities, the division went to a private island to have dinner with everyone, where entertaining skit was provided by the analysts making fun of all the senior bankers and groups around the region. The analysts really did a great job. While the food wasn’t great, the atmosphere was engaging. It was well planned in that every table of 10 had 2 reserved seats for MDs only, forcing the junior and senior bankers to mingle with each other. Costumes were also required from every group representing their groups. The FIG team won with their FIG decorated yogas. The Japan team definitely went all out as well, even performing a sumo dance on stage. For 3rd place, there was a dance off among the Australian team, the Financing Team, and the Vikings (co-heads of Corp Fin). The Vikings won with their Haka dance, imitating the New Zealand All Blacks Rugby War dance. Afterwards, everyone participated in the Thailand tradition where we put our wishes on an hot air balloon and released into the sky. Overall, the entire event was extremely well planned and definitely achieved its goals. I left Thailand with a much better sense of team spirit and feels much closer to several of the offices around the region.
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