{"id":300,"date":"2019-04-05T15:33:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T19:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/?p=300"},"modified":"2019-04-17T11:02:35","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T15:02:35","slug":"oh-the-places-youll-go-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/oh-the-places-youll-go-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, The Places You’ll Go – Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\u201cNever did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling.\u201d<\/em> \u2013\u00a0Roman Payne<\/em><\/h4>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Last week we were in Central America.\u00a0 No luck there.\u00a0 This week we head to Asia.\u00a0 We are almost, but not quite finished with our around-the-world- journey in search of a reliable, reasonably priced shirt manufacturer<\/a> for our ever-evolving custom logo shirt business.\u00a0 My Grandmother used to like to say \u201cLife is simple.\u00a0 People complicate it.\u201d\u00a0 Was I unnecessarily complicating things?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By the way, Roman Payne, author of this week\u2019s quote, is a very interesting guy.\u00a0 A novelist and poet who writes a great deal about travel.\u00a0 In January 2018, he was released from a two-year detention in Morocco and returned to his native Seattle.\u00a0 This was after a 20-year total voyage modeled on the travels of his hero, Odysseus.\u00a0 This is what he said about his return to Seattle:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a hallucinatory experience coming here.\u00a0 After two years in one of the world\u2019s poorest countries\u2014to come here to this technologically-advanced, and socially-advanced wonderland.\u00a0 The people here seem like a completely different species.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Pakistan – Lahore<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By 2004 there was essentially no such thing as a US based textile industry anymore.\u00a0 At the time there was a lot of buzz about what was happening with garments in Pakistan, so I reached out to a college friend who lived there.\u00a0 With his family, he too was in the textile business, though in a much bigger way than I was.\u00a0 He recommended a company in his hometown of Lahore.\u00a0 Lahore is an ancient city that was split right down the middle when India was partitioned in 1947 and The Islamic Republic of Pakistan was created. It is the cultural center of the region, and its divided history is reflected in the fact that it was the location for both the Declaration of Indian Independence as well as the resolution calling for the establishment of Pakistan.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Being Jewish, I was wary of going to Pakistan, but my friend assured me it would be OK and that he would personally guarantee my safety to my family. \u00a0I thought that sounded a little melodramatic when he said it, but I thought, \u201cOK, I have no real idea what goes on over there.\u00a0 I\u2019ll take that as insurance.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I understood it all a little more clearly when I walked off the plane at the Lahore airport and his driver was literally standing at the foot of the stairs of the plane.\u00a0 His car was on the actual tarmac, just a few feet away.\u00a0 \u201cDo you have a luggage ticket?\u201d he asked me.\u00a0 I gave it to him and he led me to his car.\u00a0 A few minutes later we drove off the tarmac and out of the airport and 15 minutes later I walked into my friend\u2019s house.\u00a0 He showed me to my room, and there was my luggage waiting for me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Such was my introduction to how things worked in Pakistan.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Lahore is a breathtakingly beautiful city much of which was built from thin red bricks about the same length, but a quarter of the height and thickness of a typical American brick.\u00a0 It was great to reconnect with my friend and his family, many of whom I had met in the US.\u00a0 You could see signs of growth and progress all around the city and my friend talked about his family\u2019s growing interests, expanding from textiles to real estate and other investments.\u00a0 It felt like a city on the move.\u00a0 Seven times a day, where ever you were, you heard the echoing call to prayer.\u00a0 Things stopped, and people prayed.\u00a0 From being in Lahore, I was conscious of the newness of The United States and how compared to how long Lahore has been around, 200 years is not very old at all.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Nothing happened to make me feel threatened, but I was always on my guard.\u00a0 My friend lived in a modest home, but his home was walled off from the street and he had armed guards on duty at all times.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t feel like a social war zone, though, like it had in Peru or El Salvador, so the underlying danger of the place was felt in a subtler way. \u00a0On Sunday we walked in a nearby park.\u00a0 There were many people strolling and I felt reasonably comfortable.\u00a0 But It was hard to forget the fact that if the people that I was passing on the street knew I was Jewish, many would not be OK with that. The US still had pretty good relations with Pakistan at the time, but they were deteriorating.\u00a0 At a dinner, some of my friend\u2019s friends challenged me on the recent US invasion of Iraq.\u00a0 \u201cWhat right did the US have?\u201d they asked.\u00a0 It was not a subject I was qualified or inclined to debate and did my best to deflect the discussion.\u00a0 I knew I had to be very careful.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The factory itself was clean and reasonably modern. All the people were very accommodating and pleasant.\u00a0\u00a0 Interestingly, the actual sewing was mostly done by men.\u00a0 In Muslim Pakistan, men and women did not work together.\u00a0 We all got along, and the quality and prices were pretty good.\u00a0 We worked with that factory in Lahore for a couple of years.\u00a0 Not unlike with our US experience, quality and deliveries were not perfect.\u00a0 They were doing their best, and we were doing our best, but between the two of us, we just weren\u2019t as good at planning and executing as we needed to be, and things felt like they were always just on the edge of being completely out of control.\u00a0 Our relationship was based on a lot of trust.\u00a0 They shipped us containers, we paid them. Sometimes there was problem with production.\u00a0 Sometimes we needed a little more time to pay. Sales and production ebbed and flowed, and we generally had either too much, or not enough product.\u00a0 Considering the many challenges, the relationship really did work pretty well.\u00a0 The country was getting more militant, though and increasingly unstable.\u00a0 It eventually got to the point where I didn\u2019t feel I could go back.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We had some meetings in Dubai to try to work out some things, but trust was starting to wane.\u00a0 Dubai was another amazing place that I was able to see a very interesting side of.\u00a0 I had another friend from school who was wheeling and dealing over there and what a world he lived in!\u00a0 Boy was the money flowing back then.\u00a0 This was before the Great Recession and there was a building boom in Dubai unlike the world had ever seen.\u00a0 At one point I think they were using something like 90% of the world\u2019s building cranes!\u00a0 We had a couple of pretty wild nights in Dubai, but ultimately, regarding Pakistan, it became clear it wasn\u2019t a good long-term strategy to do business in a country I was not comfortable visiting which was quickly veering out of the orbit of the international community.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

India – Tiruppur<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We had ceased our US sourcing a few years earlier, but I had stayed in touch with some of our old suppliers.\u00a0 One day, one of our old cut-and-sew contractors reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in seeing what he was doing in India.\u00a0 As it turned out, he was working with the guy who made the original Lacoste shirts in North Carolina before those factories closed.\u00a0 It was so interesting to see how people adapt to change!\u00a0 This was the exact same guy who made the first shirts we ever sold.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For those of you who missed some of the earlier blog posts, when I was in college I had a friend whose father was a salesman for a few of the big textile mills in North Carolina.\u00a0 Lacoste was one of his accounts and he was selling a lot of production to them.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For his expenses, instead of giving him money, my friend\u2019s Father gave him \u201cslightly irregular\u201d Lacoste shirts. My friend was new to the US, having grown up in Rhodesia, in Africa.\u00a0 He had come to New York to go to school when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe (another African connection!). He didn\u2019t know anyone and knew even less about what these alligator shirts were all about.\u00a0 I had friends at schools all over the country and we sent them these shirts to sell on their campuses.\u00a0 We had a nice little thing going, but the limits were obvious.\u00a0 \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be great\u201d I thought, \u201cif you could get that same great shirt with any logo or design you wanted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Oh, how the world turns!\u00a0 Now the guy who made those original shirts – he was an almost mythic figure back in those first days – was now trying to win my business!\u00a0 It really didn\u2019t mean much in the greater scheme of things, but when I put all these pieces together, it was one of the greatest days of my life.\u00a0 I felt like in some small way, I had arrived.\u00a0 Plus, at the very least, I could be confident he knew how to make the shirt!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

One of the many amazing things about India was how incredibly friendly and welcoming the Indian people are.\u00a0 All the Indian vendors we met really knew how to make a buyer feel special!\u00a0 The people in Pakistan were very nice, but they were extremely practical and stuck to business.\u00a0 In that way, they were very similar to our US suppliers.\u00a0 The Indians seemed to understand service in an entirely different way.\u00a0 I came to learn that amongst each other, they were extremely distrustful, but with Americans in particular, they were very eager to do business.\u00a0 After much training in keeping one\u2019s guard up, and trying not to reveal too much, the Indian way of honesty and transparency took some getting used to, complicated by the Indian custom of moving one\u2019s head from side to side when one agrees or is trying to be agreeable, which is the way most of the rest of the world signals disagreement or displeasure.\u00a0 How did that happen!?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Being the cynical (ex) New Yorker that I was at the time, at first, I did question the sincerity of the Indians we worked with.\u00a0 I quickly came to trust, however, that the behavior was genuine.\u00a0 To this day, just about every Indian I have met has been an extraordinarily nice, and caring person.\u00a0 They have also been very hardworking and love technology, but also have a very spiritual side and an uncanny ability to keep things in the proper perspective.\u00a0 The Indians we have worked with over the years have been very ambitious, but ultimately it was never just about the money.\u00a0 It was a very nice change to begin working in that environment.\u00a0 I learned a great deal from it, and it has made me a much better businessman and person.\u00a0 I hope this is not a quality that gets sacrificed at the altar of globalization and progress.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Much of the knit textile business in India is centered in the Southern part of the country around a town called Tiruppur. \u00a0In our first visit there around 2006, it was still a very poor area, and the factories were not modern.\u00a0 Elephants, cows and chickens roamed through the dirt streets and people got around on foot or sometimes on motor bike.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Billy and Hayward, my American contacts, were running production in India the same basic way we had run it in the US.\u00a0 They bought yarn, had it knit at one factory, dyed and finished at another, and then cut and sewn at a third.\u00a0 That was a difficult process to manage in the US, where roads were paved, and the electricity stayed on 24 hours.\u00a0 It was a little tougher in Tiruppur, where untouchable, sacred elephants often blocked the muddy streets.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Through an endlessly evolving series of connections and relationships, Billy and Hayward kept production going in and around Tiruppur and did a great job for us.\u00a0 There were still issues on an almost regular basis, but they primarily managed them, and considering the length and breadth of our manufacturing journey, we had made considerable progress. It was the most consistently high quality and dependable results we had achieved to date.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

On our next trip to India, about a year and a half later, you could recognize the old Tiruppur, but barely.\u00a0 The roads were now mostly paved, many more cars and motorbikes were starting to jam things up, and a few glass buildings – mostly banks and auto dealerships – were sprouting up.\u00a0 The hotels were cleaner, had better food and reasonably reliable Internet. More factories had also opened, and many of them were very modern, well maintained, and were being run with an environmental and social consciousness that was obvious.\u00a0 This was my first view of industry as a potential source for more than just economic good in the world.\u00a0 From all the other factories I had seen over the years, I understood that wages were the most important economic development component of the process, but to see the Indian entrepreneurs valuing the work environment, health and education of their workers as well as the environmental impact of all they were doing was a real eye-opener.\u00a0 What made them so smart?\u00a0 They were not doing it just to impress their customers.\u00a0 Could business really be done differently, and better?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

India, Tiruppur and the world was changing before our eyes.\u00a0 The speed and breadth of the change was dramatic and, in many ways, took your breath away.\u00a0 And things were speeding up. Keeping up was not going to be easy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

India, Tiruppur, Part Two<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

And then, just like that, the whole thing shut down.\u00a0 Despite all the progress, apparently many of the Tiruppur dyers had not updated their waste treatment processes sufficiently.\u00a0 Dying is a very difficult process.\u00a0 It traditionally uses a great deal of water, and the waste is very difficult to clean.\u00a0 It is almost impossible to do economically in an environmentally friendly way.\u00a0 There are sites around our office in North Carolina that are still trying to clean up dying related environmental problems from 25+ years ago. The government in Tiruppur had shut down the non-compliant dyers and despite the history of rampant corruption, on this matter, no one was budging.\u00a0 We could get material knit, cut and sewn, but we couldn\u2019t get anything dyed.\u00a0 The environmental bird had come home to roost.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

And yet once again, we got lucky.\u00a0 Without our knowing anything about it, around this time a long-time but very small customer of ours in Chicago had lunch with his friend, Rajiv. \u00a0Knowing Rajiv was in the business, he started bragging about his Queensboro shirt.\u00a0 \u201cYou should really get in touch with these guys\u201d our customer told Rajiv, \u201cThey are great to work with and make a really high-quality product.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Rajiv, who also had factories around Tiruppur called me and immediately apologized for bothering me.\u00a0 He very rarely called new customers, he explained, because he was so busy with his existing ones.\u00a0 He told me about his lunch with our customer, and more out of a courtesy to him than anything, he wanted to reach out.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I had never heard such a laid-back sales pitch!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As it turned out, he called at a good time.\u00a0 Not only was our production stuck, we had very little hope or options to unstick it any time soon.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cI know\u201d he said when I explained the situation to him.\u00a0 \u201cAll of our competitors are really struggling with that right now.\u00a0 Fortunately, we own one of the few certified dye houses in the area that have been able to continue working.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It turned out that not only did Rajiv\u2019s family own a dye house, but they also did their own knitting and cut and sew.\u00a0 This was always a huge plus.\u00a0 Rajiv was excited about our business because we basically ran the same product, with little change, repeatedly.\u00a0 That is a garment factory owner\u2019s dream!\u00a0 No changing hem lines and hot and cold colors in our business!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Rajiv\u2019s father, who had started the business, had come to the US to study engineering when he was younger and worked in the US for many years after he graduated.\u00a0 Rajiv grew up in Chicago, where he now lived full time when he wasn\u2019t in India.\u00a0 He got his BA and MBA in the Midwest and was as American as I was.\u00a0 He was a huge Chicago Bulls fan, and loved the fact that we were in Wilmington, NC, The GOAT Michael Jordan\u2019s home town.\u00a0 He said he couldn\u2019t wait to visit us!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

His family factories were not brand new, but they were very clean and well lit.\u00a0 His Father had designed a very innovative waste water treatment process at their dyeing factory, the effectiveness of which was proven by a grove of palm trees planted on factory property.\u00a0 If any of the trees died, they knew the process wasn\u2019t working.\u00a0 They took great pride in the health of these palms.\u00a0 They all looked great.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

On our third trip to the area to visit Rajiv\u2019s factories, we saw even more progress.\u00a0 We were able to stay in a 5-star hotel, ate great Chinese food, and rode in brand new cars.\u00a0 Everything was fully air conditioned.\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t have been more comfortable.\u00a0 Rajiv and his team were the best yet to work with.\u00a0 We had a few issues with dye consistency and deliveries but were easily able to work through anything.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

China \u2013 Be Careful of the Plum Wine.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

To this day, we continue to work with Rajiv and his family and are very happy with the relationship.\u00a0 As the company has grown, our sourcing has expanded and while we were always wary of making polos or t shirts in China, we did start making some jackets, button downs and hats there and went over to take a look.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By the time we visited China, around 2010, the country was well on its way to becoming the colossus it has become.\u00a0 Arriving first in Hong Kong, and then going to Shanghai, the sheer size of those cities, filled as they were with very busy people and huge buildings, was overwhelming. When we were there, Shanghai alone had 24 million people.\u00a0 Google tells me they are now up to 26.5 million.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

While Chinese apparel quality and reliability was never considered the best, the fact that the prices were always so low, and their ability and willingness to do just about anything so extreme, they never really got pushed too hard on the relationship side of things.\u00a0 That, of course, is a somewhat roundabout way of saying they were never all that nice, which was our experience.\u00a0 Communications could be difficult at times.\u00a0 It is said that there is never a problem communicating with a Chinese factory until there is a problem with an order.\u00a0 It is just a question of time with any factory until there is a problem with an order.\u00a0 You can\u2019t go to China or do business with China without being in awe of China.\u00a0 It\u2019s just massive but still seems to function.\u00a0 It\u2019s a scary place less for what it is, than for what it might become.\u00a0 Is it possible to control all those people?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t seem like it could be, but they are apparently trying very hard.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a different vision of progress than what I have seen in my other travels.\u00a0 I am hopeful the more humanistic view will prevail.\u00a0 They fought hard for, earned and delivered on the business they have won, so for that they deserve a lot of credit.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We did have some very interesting meals in China, and two were particularly memorable.\u00a0 The first was a lunch with a particularly non-communicative factory owner near the city of Ningbo which is a garment center about an hour outside of Shanghai.\u00a0 The restaurant was in a traditional Chinese inn.\u00a0 There were many carp swimming in a little pond under a bridge heading into the restaurant.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We were told the area was famous for its local plum wine.\u00a0 Not wanting to be the bad guests, we tried it.\u00a0 It was ok and didn\u2019t taste too strong.\u00a0 We had another glass.\u00a0 We also tried most of the other local specialties we were offered, some of which were vaguely recognizable, but a few of which weren\u2019t.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Many of the meals we had in China were served on a Lazy Susan – a big platter that spins on the table that makes it easy to pass dishes.\u00a0 We were using one at the inn, and at one point a particularly unappetizing looking dish was soon spun in front of me.\u00a0 \u201cWere those huge cockroaches?\u201d I immediately thought. \u201cMaybe they were prawns.\u201d\u00a0 My mind started to race \u201cWere they seeing if I would eat them? \u00a0Was it a joke?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I tried to play it cool and bide my time.\u00a0 I looked at the dish again, and then at my Sourcing Manager who was travelling with me. \u00a0Our eyes met and there was a flash of understanding.\u00a0 \u201cAre you seeing what I am seeing here?\u201d my eyes said to him.\u00a0 \u201cYes, and good luck with this one, Boss\u201d his eyes were saying back to me.\u00a0 The plum wine had hit us.\u00a0 Hard.\u00a0 We both started giggling. Soon, we were completely out of control.\u00a0\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t really laugh because it wasn\u2019t that kind of a thing.\u00a0 That would have been much easier.\u00a0 All we could manage was a high pitched, awful sounding giggling.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I could feel the tears start to come.\u00a0 They were not tears of joy.\u00a0 We were both struggling with every ounce of strength in our bodies to gain some measure of composure.\u00a0 It was impossible.\u00a0 Our hosts were dead pan cold faced.\u00a0 Neither betrayed one ounce of emotion.\u00a0 They continued to eat as if we were not literally dying right there in front of them.\u00a0 Of course, that only made it worse.\u00a0 We saw them sitting there, apparently totally oblivious to us, and we just giggled more.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I don\u2019t know how we stopped.\u00a0 Eventually we did, though, and no one ever said anything about it.\u00a0 We finished our meals in silence.\u00a0 I definitely needed a drink after that, but I wasn\u2019t drinking any more plum wine.\u00a0 We never did any business with that factory.\u00a0 I am sure they tell stories about us to this day.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The second memorable meal in China was the breakfast buffet at the Hotel Shangri-la, in Shanghai.\u00a0 President Obama stayed at the Shangri-la when he visited China.\u00a0 I think it was a good choice.\u00a0 It was a really nice hotel, in a great area, and it had great views of the old city from across the river.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The best thing about the Shangri-La was that it was only about $135 a night, and that included the breakfast buffet.\u00a0 I have been out to Las Vegas a couple of times since then and have seen some impressive buffets, but to this day, I have never seen anything that compared to this.\u00a0 I think there were 7 big rooms of food, each dedicated to a different region of the world.\u00a0 They had sections for South America, Central America, Japan, Korea, Russia, all the different countries of Europe including Scandinavia.\u00a0 It was exhaustive in its scope, and all of it was good.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Thankfully, each dish had a sign in front of it, so we knew exactly what we were eating.\u00a0 That was a welcome relief.\u00a0 The buffet alone was worth the price of the room.\u00a0 We stayed there a couple of nights, and what a contrast it was to those early sourcing trips.\u00a0 I thought back to the run-down Motel 6 we stayed at in my first sourcing trip to North Carolina, and the not-too-clean country restaurant in Lumberton that didn\u2019t even serve alcohol but looked the other way when you brought in your own bottle in a brown paper bag.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Sure, my business had grown and was becoming more successful, but more than that, the world was changing.\u00a0 10 years before, the Hotel Shangri-la didn\u2019t exist in China, nor did all the big shiny buildings.\u00a0 Except for in the big cities of Europe and the United States, there were no big fancy cars, skyscrapers, fancy restaurants, or 5-star hotels in places that made garments, including in The United States.\u00a0 Somehow, as I went about my business for the last 30 years, the world was growing up.\u00a0 Where was it all going?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I was hoping to finish up the sourcing\/travel narrative this week, but I\u2019m already into seven pages on this post, and still haven\u2019t even gotten to Africa yet.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

And on Roman Payne again, this is what he had to say about The United States on his return:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“I am grateful for my life.\u00a0 I am grateful to the king of Morocco, and I am grateful and overjoyed to be in America today.\u00a0 Today I love my country.\u00a0 I always preferred Paris, however, and I would probably have returned to France when the judge declared me innocent, if it weren\u2019t for three American diplomats in Morocco who became my dear friends: Sa\u00efd, Najiba, and Merica.\u00a0 They were the most generous and gracious people, they protected me and defended me to the Moroccan government; they made regular trips to Marrakech to see to my well-being.\u00a0 They showed me just how powerful the United States is, but also how generous and protective America is of its citizens exiled abroad.\u00a0 If it weren\u2019t for my friends at the consulate, I wouldn\u2019t have moved back to the United States; but they showed me how beautiful American people can be.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNever did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Roman Payne Last week we were in Central America.\u00a0 No luck there.\u00a0 This week we head to Asia.\u00a0 We are almost, but not quite finished with our around-the-world- journey in search of a reliable, reasonably priced shirt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.queensboro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}