The Cathay Pacific Lounge Bangkok
Originally, I had planned to get a lounge invitation for one of the Miracle Lounges (the contract lounges MH use in BKK), as I had read some very positive reviews particularly about their concourse D lounge. When enquiring about the procedure here on FT, I was recommended to somehow get an invitation card, as the admission process could get a bit complicated.
When we arrived at the West transfer counters (where MH is supposed to run a counter), the girl who was taking care of me tried to find the counter responsible for my concern, but she was obviously told that their counter was not (yet) open - which is a bit weird, as MH are flying in and out of BKK approximately every 2 to 3 hours. When being turned away by the people staffing the counters, she really appeared quite helpless and was obviously very grateful when I told her that I could use the CX lounge as well (even though I would have preferred one of the Miracle lounges, as they have showers contrary to the CX lounge). She then dropped me off at the entrance of the Cathay Lounge, which was fortunately just around the corner (it is located at the root of the G concourse).
Initially, I was a bit underwhelmed by the general appearance of the lounge. The ceilings are rather low, and the decor doesn’t look too fresh any more, let alone that the style of the furniture looks quite random.
However, if you can grab one of the armchairs by the window facing the tarmac, you have a (somewhat restricted) view of one of the runways, more or less exactly where the planes touch down, so I would actually give the lounge a thumbs up for the outside view.
The lounge itself consists of a small buffet area right behind the entrance with tables resembling a kiosk or a random bakery, and then a larger „living room“ that also contains the staffed bar. There is actually quite a lot of staff hanging around (which is quite typical for Thailand, I would say), but you never know whether they are there to just be there, to take orders, or whatever. The bar has a proper espresso machine, which seems to be important to some of you, so I should probably mention it.
If you go towards the other side of the lounge, it suddenly smells like a small side street in Wan Chai, as you are approaching Cathay’s signature Noodle Bar. While the tiles of the noodle bar look a lot like something you would associate with „Swimming Pool“, it actually looks and feels really authentic, particularly with the smell in the background.
Even though it was only around 6am for my body clock (and noon on every other clock), I decided to order a typical Hong Kong style breakfast with soup and dim sum. When you walk up to The Noodle Bar, you may order from a relatively limited menu containing a few different types of noodle soup, fried noodles and dumplings. After placing you order, you receive a pager to alert you when your order is ready. Actually, I was the only person ordering at the time and still received a pager. As soon as I had gone back to my table, the pager rang - but at least, the person I ordered with found that as ridiculous as I did.
My boarding pass for the onward flight to Kuala Lumpur showed a boarding time of quarter past 1 pm (for a 2:15pm departure), which I thought was probably unrealistically early. However, as I didn’t know how long it would take to reach the assigned gate, I decided to leave at 1 and explore the huge terminal a bit.
Verdict
This is, of course, no comparison to the typical European airline lounge. While the decor seems already a bit old and the lounge itself is relatively dark, they provide everything you might expect from an international airline lounge (the lack of showers is the only disappointment here), and even though the lounge is only average by asian standards, it gets the job very well done. I would have been quite curious as to how the MH contract lounge would compare. On the internet, there seem to be both people claiming the Miracle lounge(s) to be better as well as people preferring the CX lounge.