darthlemsip

Welcome dear reader to my first trip report of 2014, one that’s a bit different to what I was expecting it to be (more on that in a mo). As any regular reader (both of them) will know, my reports tend to be more word orientated than picture orientated in terms of the flying part, so if you’re here for photos of Cathay’s excellent J product then you may want to turn back now – I didn’t take any photos (the reason why will become evident), and neither did Mrs Lem. I may sneak a stock one in. There will be a few photos of F though, simply because it made my jaw drop.

Part one – And in a change to our scheduled flight…

Anyway, as I was saying, this TR is a bit different from what I was expecting – mainly because it’s of Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong, as opposed to BA’s Club World London City and New York, where we were originally booked to go.

The basic gist of it is that I have to go to Melbourne with work and was trying to find a way to get Mrs Lem out there using Avios (knowing we’d have to cancel our NY trip to do this). It was early, I was tired and I put the dates of the NY trip in while searching for flights to HKG, and left it for 2 passengers, without realising. "Oooh, what’s this, 2 seats in Cathay’s J to HKG, on the exact dates we need? Oh, hang on, no that’s when we’re in NY."

Then it really, really snowed in NY again. The temperatures were set to plummet again. Hong Kong was warm. The seats were still available. A wave of spontaneity crashed over us and with only a few days until we were scheduled to go, we’d ditched New York and were off to Hong Kong instead. Where we’d never been and knew almost nothing about. Fortunately my sister and her husband had lived there a few years previously, plus the internet is marvelous for such things, and less than 24 hours later we were fully furnished with what to do and where to go.

Hotel wise we used hotels.com as we had a free night with them, and there was an offer for The Langham in Kowloon which was excellent and we snapped up. A quick search found me a site that gave me instant membership at one of their 1865 Club’s top tiers, meaning room upgrades, welcome gifts etc, and once the number was confirmed I sent it over to the hotel to ensure it was already on the booking (hopefully meaning the upgrade was sorted before we arrived – which it was).

Seats on the plane were selected, and two days out we were checked in. Now all there was to do was wait.

Well, almost.

The day before we flew I was up very early as I wasn’t well. Searching reward availability on our dates to see if anything else had opened up (was actually looking for F on the BA A380) showed 2 seats in F on the CX flight home. One quick phone call to the Gold line when they opened and it was booked – due to the nature of my booking (the Avios + cash redemption type), my original booking had to be cancelled and it rebooked. But it was done, J out, F back.

And then I couldn’t check us in.

Cathay advised it was because the original booking was still checked in on the system, and I’d have to go to the airport to sort it out. In the meantime they’d allocated me two seats right down the back of the cabin.

So, more time in Heathrow Terminal 3 – deep joy…

Coming up in the next part – the joy of public transport to the airport, finally getting checked in and a bit of lounge hopping.