popoemt

Pro, I am enjoying this trip report, I did a trip to China in 2002, same boat tour, same food, and I am really enjoying the memories and reliving that experience, thanks for sharing it!

N830MH

Wow! What a fabulous photos report. I'm so glad you had a great trip. Enjoy China trip.

moondog

I'm also enjoying this tr but I would like to point out that guilin and it's culture comprise a small subset of guangxi.

prolixindec

moondog, you are of course quite correct. Guangxi is indeed much more than Guilin. I'd like to have a chance to see all of it someday.

goodeats21

Great Report.

And the pictures on the ground...I have to believe at least some of those were taken with something beside an iPhone...correct?

Otherwise, I am in awe of your iPhone skills....

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

AA_EXP09

Also notice how in Chinese they have the nation of origin names for the wine while in English they do not.
I think that AA crews are among the better ones most of the time TPAC but still poor in comparison to OZ/KE/CX/SQ/JL/NH and even MH.

AA_EXP09

Even travelling within China I find it interesting to see how the culture has developed over the years, changed, and is still kept distinct within different regions.
(I am most familiar with Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai within China, though I have also helped create a packaged tour. I am also very familiar with both SARs before and after the handover.)

cyclogenesis

Wow.. Great pics! Loved the ones with the Egrets (?) on each side of the pole.. Getting my wanderlust fired up!

prolixindec

Thanks, goodeats21.

I took the first landscape pic, the shot of the cooks on the back of the boat, and the black and white shots with my DSLR.

All the rest (the 777 at the beginning of the first segment, the shots from inside the lounge, the A320 at the beginning of the second segment, the second landscape pic, all the food pics, and all the pics from on board the plane) are from my iPhone.

I hope that helps.

gabdusch

Wow, great report! Thanks for showing us a part of China we don't get to read about to often...makes me want to visit! That certainly is quite different from my trips to Guangzhou and Shenzhen...

prolixindec

NOTE: Thanks for reading this far into the series. This chapter begins with lots of text and ends with lots and lots of photos. So if you're not the type of person who likes to read, please just scroll on down.

We stayed at the Shangri-La Hotel in Guilin, and the pic above is the view looking outside the window of our hotel room. The hotel was quite nice, although I didn't take any pictures of the room. I wasn't even thinking about making a trip report while I was there... the idea for the trip report occurred to me afterwards. So no shots of the hotel.

Next it was back to Beijing on Air China, in coach again, this time on a 737. It was a nighttime flight so they just served a snack, which I turned down because I was more tired than hungry. The flight was uneventful and we landed on time.

Soon I was ready to head back to Chicago.

Let me take a moment and praise the schedule of AA 187 and 186. As I mentioned in the first chapter of this trip report, AA 187 leaves at night and lands at night twenty-four hours later. This is ideal for adjusting to Asian time. Despite sleeping on the plane, I usually arrive a little fatigued, and after the two or three hours that it always takes to get settled in the hotel it feels like time for a nap. And then, serendipitously, it just happens to be about midnight or 1:00 in the morning. So it's quite easy to fall asleep and equally easy to wake up at about six or seven in the morning. Then you're body is magically on Asian time and it's as if you don't even have to worry about jet lag at all.

Coming home is a little harder on the body but it's much better for enjoying the flight. AA 186 leaves in the morning and arrives at the same time on the same day -- usually you even arrive "before" you take off. This is great for enjoying the travel experience, because you're wide awake most of the time. I didn't sleep as much on the way home, so I have more pictures. For one thing, I took advantage of all the meal opportunities.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Instead, let's just chill for a moment with a nice Bloody Mary before we go any further at all:



Are you enjoying your cocktail? Good. Then we'll continue.

Flying in a premium cabin (Business or First) on AA gets you access to a lounge in Beijing that's shared with Cathay Pacific and I think a few other airlines. I don't have any pictures of the lounge -- again, I wasn't thinking of writing a trip report while I was there. The place was comfortable but not dripping in luxury.

There are four main parts. I decided to call them public (food), public (drink), public (internet), and private.

Public (food): this is to your left after check in. There was a very decent range of hot and cold breakfast foods, with some really well-done Chinese offerings steaming in bamboo "dim sum" trays. I recommend this highly.

Public (drink): turn right after checking in. It was disappointing, with an espresso machine, juices, miniature bottles of water, and about four lonely bottles of alcohol. Not that anyone really wants a full bar at 10:00 in the morning, but the offerings still looked kind of sad and neglected. Surely someone on a First Class ticket, enjoying a wonderful vacation, will someday want to make an Irish coffee or a mimosa, even at 10:00 in the morning. Of course, the Chinese aren't big drinkers, so I guess I understand that the hot food section was better attended. This area had a few bagged snacks, like chips and granola bars. Please note that if you just turn right after check in and see these snacks, you'll think this was all the food the lounge has to offer. Don't miss the generous dim sum by neglecting to turn left.

Public (internet): Turn right after checking in, go past public (drink). This area has about a dozen computers in a set-up that looks more like workstations in an office building than a premium lounge. For a moment I was curious about whether you could get onto Facebook here, which is otherwise blocked in China. But I didn't care all that much.

Private: This room is also to the right, on past public (internet). It's a separate room with only a few seats and a nice open atmosphere. It's my favorite place to sit in this lounge because fewer people seem to make their way back here. That makes it feel quieter and somehow more exclusive. In all my trips to this lounge, I've never seen more than two or three other travelers in this room. (Of course, now that I'm revealing the secret on FlyerTalk, maybe some more people will join me?)

In case anyone on FlyerTalk is interested in photos of the Beijing AA lounge, I can post some after an upcoming trip when I'll hopefully remember to take pictures.

One nice thing for me about the Beijing lounge is that it's directly across from American Airlines' gate.

Boarding was announced in person by an attentive agent. I went downstairs and board with no hassles despite a large crowd milling around the gate for coach boarding. I went to the First Class line and was the first person on the aircraft. I turned left, found seat 2A again, and started to build my nest for the next 13 hours.

Guess who wandered by?

Arlene!!!

Remember her? She's the Flight Attendant and wine enthusiast from my outbound trip. She recognized me while I was boarding, called me by my name, and welcomed me on board again. She was working in coach for this trip but came forward later in the flight to say hello and to offer her knowledge of premium wines. I thought this was far above and beyond what's expected of a Flight Attendant, since she was adding to her workload by coming forward to attend to someone who wasn't even in her duty station just because she remembered me from a previous flight. She was just as enthusiastic about the trip as she was last week on the outbound leg.

Kudos, American Airlines. Hang on to Arlene, she's a real winner.

Before takeoff, they came by with the usual champagne, water, or orange juice. About 15 minutes after takeoff I got the above-pictured Bloody Mary. And then in a few more minutes, another. It was still before noon after all, and far too early for any other form of alcohol. Except for champagne. ;-)

They came by with the usual crazy water glasses at the beginning of the brunch service:



Followed by warm nuts:



Brunch started with an amuse bouche. Note my very generously sized table.



The amuse bouche consisted of smoked salmon, creme fraiche, and capers on top of a round of warm artisanal bread:



The appetizer was seared scallops topped with peppers and a soy glaze:



The soup course was once again delicious, this time with an obviously Asian flair:



I had a question about the white wines, so Arlene actually came up from coach and insisted on giving me a private tasting along with her knowledge and impressions. Again, service that was personalized and far beyond what one would expect.



The two white wines were quite different, which gave me more respect for American Airlines' efforts to assemble a good collection. After all, it wouldn't be much fun if the offerings were too similar. I was very happy with my choice, which was of course brought to me in a full-sized glass. I started enjoying it with the salad course. The salad was fine; note that the proportion of greens to goodies was just right.



For the main course I selected the braised duck. This was a solid win, easily as good as duck that you can get in a restaurant. I had a fair amount of confidence that this was going to be excellent; after all, duck is perfect for airline food: first, duck has well-done, so it's hard to overcook. Furthermore, braising is a slow-cooking method, so keeping it warm for an extended period actually enhances the flavors instead of degrading them. And duck isn't the leanest of meats, meaning it's hard to dry out. And as I predicted, this entree was excellent.

Attention airline CEO's everywhere: Follow American Airlines' lead, and serve more braised duck!



This time, I couldn't turn down the dessert offering. This was what the menu called the "special sundae," topped with vanilla sauce, crystallized sugar, and cocoa powder. The vanilla sauce was rich and delicious. And as you can see, I was finished with white wine at this point and I had switched to the port, which was served in a dessert glass.



Gratuitous picture of my glass of port. I think this image captures the happiness I felt after eating the excellent meal, enjoying the great service (Arlene!), sipping the tasty wine, and settling back into the comfy seat.



By this point we'd flown up into Siberia and the light was getting all slanty and it was starting to look like a sunset.



The wing of 777-200ER, note the flex.



The sun went down, briefly, and so it was time for pajamas, turn-down service, and a three-hour nap.



One last photograph before lights out. Not a great picture, but you can see the quilted mattress pad and the comfy duvet. You can also see that I could stretch out fully on the bed. The angle of the photograph makes the bed look more narrow than it really is; it was actually fairly spacious and I had plenty of wiggle room. (And I'm six feet tall.) I drifted into a pleasant nap as the aircraft flew into the darkening sky, far above the Arctic snows.

More in the next chapter. We still have two meal services to go before landing!

free_miles

What a great read and fantastic photos! You obviously have excellent photography skills whether using an iphone or DSLR. It will be sad to see the Flagship First Class service go, but maybe AA will put 77W on this route?

UniqueDragon

写得很生动。顶！我在等待着有一天能体验一下头等舱。

prolixindec

uniquedragon: 感谢您阅读我的文章。在我进一步添加内容的过程中，欢迎继续交流。

free_miles: Thanks, I appreciate the comments! Stay tuned for the next chapter.

gabdusch: Thanks. It is great part of China to visit. This region feels more rural and less crowded than Guangzhou and Shenzhen. When you drive out of Guilin, you pretty rapidly get into countryside that looks untouched since the middle of the last century: you see some farmers tilling the soil by hand, others using oxen to tow their plows; you see brick buildings that look to have been built by hand, machinery that was looks to have been built a century ago and kept working by the ingenuity and resourcefulness of people who don't have any other choice. And you still get that Chinese experience where both kids and adults will come up to westerners and ask for a photo with you... simply because you're a westerner.

cyclogenesis: Thanks!

moondog

I'd give it a few years. I've been spending about half my time down here for the past year, and pretty much every mid-sized+ city is undergoing the same breed of construction that struck SH between 1995 and 2000 and BJ during the 8 year run up to the Olympics. This means that life isn't so pleasant now, but when all is said and done, these cities will be clean and far better connected to each other and the outside world than they are today. I also predict that Guangxi will attain provincial status within the next ~2 years because it is a key resource for Beijing wrt SE Asia (for trade and politics).