Part three - Miracles can happen
I'll start this part with a very bold statement.
Cathay Pacific's new business class is the best J seat I have ever flown in.
In the last few years I've flown Emirates (inc the A380), BA, AA (old seat) and VS in J and none of them compare to this. The closest is Emirates on the A380, but that was a little too narrow for me.
Everything was spot on, from the crew, through the food, to the seat itself. To me, it was like a slightly reduced version of BA's New First seat - but with better storage options.
Here's a few stock photos for those who don't know what it looks like
It was just brilliant.
From trip reports before I've brought up my inability to sleep on planes, but was hoping that the late departure combined with a couple of glasses of bubbly would get me on my way to the land of nod. After a final glass of champers before departure, I got changed into my pj's - I was going to attempt the impossible feat! We were airborne bang on time, and it struck me how quiet the 77W was (actually, a fourth first for this trip - I'd never flown in one before, only a 777-300 on a day flight) - another good sign. So, eye mask on, ear plugs in and seat set to bed mode - would it work, would I be able to sleep?
Next time I opened my eyes, the countdown said we had just over 5 hours to go. It had happened - 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep on a plane. Well done Cathay, top of the class.
This is also why I didn't have any photos of the seat - nobody wants to see it after someone's just woken up...
Now, 5 hours doesn't sound a lot when you're on an 11 hour flight, but I was happy just to have slept at all, and didn't really want that much more as we were landing in Hong Kong early in the evening, so would be trying to sleep again then. I bravely decided to wake Mrs Lem up. I got her 'look', regardless of her having agreed beforehand that sleeping the whole flight was a bad move.
A couple of hours out from Hong Kong, the breakfast run started. I'm assuming it's a Cathay thing that their top tier members and other OWE's get their choice first? When the bread/muffin/croissant basket came round, I was approached and took a blueberry muffin. As I said thank you and the basket went off down the aisle I realised I was getting daggers from the woman opposite me (not Mrs Lem in this instance, the other side). When the basket came back to her, naturally enough there were no muffins left. This was the worst thing ever. She made quite a scene. This was repeated when I got my choice of hot breakfast and she didn't. The cabin manager dealt with it very well, but I could feel this womans' lasers boring into me whenever I became visible to her!
All too soon we were descending into Hong Kong. I don't want to sound too gushing, but I cannot praise Cathay enough - every moment of the flight was a joy, the seat was superb and the biggest compliment I can pay is that it in no way felt like a long flight at all (and yes, I know I'd been asleep for half of it).
After a breathlessly efficient immigration process, and our case was already on the conveyor belt waiting for us, we headed to our hotel desk to catch their shuttle bus - which we'd just missed and there wasn't another one for about half an hour. For an extra 500HKD we could have our own Mercedes S Class take us to the hotel instead, and would be much quicker as it doesn't stop anywhere else along the way. Sold, to the man with grey hair and glasses!
As we were driven to Kowloon, we were both just in awe of the scale of the engineering - we've both been to some fairly crazy cities before, but the density of the high rises and the offices was staggering. I love seeing modern style buildings in amongst an older style architecture - so I knew from just this short journey I was going to like it here.
As we approached The Langham, our driver called ahead to let them know we were arriving - nothing could prepare us for the assault on the sense we were about to receive. No fewer than six different people took care of various aspects of getting us out of the car, taking our luggage, opening doors, escorting us to our room, checking us in there, delivering our luggage and then turning down the bed - each one of them welcoming us by name, asking if we'd been to Hong Kong before, what our plans were and if we needed any help. In the space of about three minutes, It was bewildering to say the least.
The gentleman who did our in room check-in explained that as an 1865 Voyager member, we'd been upgraded to a Club Langham room, which was five classes above the one we'd originally booked - combined with the offer on hotels.com it was an absolute steal (checking now, we would have paid around five times as much if booking direct through the hotel for that room).
After a quick freshen up, we popped out for some dinner at a dim sum place recommended by the concierge (after another asking if we'd been to Hong Kong before, what our plans were and if we needed any help), marveling at the sheer volume of people everywhere, and the staggering wealth on show - starting with the cars parked at our hotel
With tiredness and timezone confusion setting in, we headed to bed at about 10pm. Naturally enough we woke up at 4am anyway...
Coming up next: Stupidity! Lights! Action!
Back soon