Qatar Airways QR 818: DOH – HKG
Boeing 777-300ER, A7-BOB
6/3/2025 1:45 AST - 15:10 HKT
First Class, 1A (window)



Ah, a bus. At least we get good views of the tarmac from down here.



And then we just parked by our plane, without letting us off. Many minutes ticked by.



At what point would it be faster to just drive to Hong Kong?



I feel like I make that joke every time I have a bus gate. Still, the plane looks positively majestic from the ground.





And here’s that old Cathay Pacific first class seat, my home for the next 8 hours. Qathay First, if you will.



Found the Cathay logo. Hiding between the same pajamas I got last flight, a very similar looking amenity kit, and another lemon mint. I will say, the soft product really is very similar to business class, just with more staffing, more expensive wines, and some caviar.



Got a box of chocolate.



Air stairs pulled away.



And oh there’s Kevin Hart again. Still as inaudible as ever. And it looks like they’re still using all the Q Suites footage despite this not being a Q Suites equipped aircraft. They just cut out the clips of him explaining how to open the door if it jams.



A quick taxi later, my short time in Doha drew to a close as we took off.




Once in the air, I used the lavatory again. They got fancier toothbrush boxes, and full mouthwash bottles too.



Still no foot pedal for the trash lid. 0/10.




Got a packaged date and an “Arabic coffee” that kind of just tasted like dirty dish water. Not sure what happened there. I've had Arabic coffee that didn't taste like this before - am I just uncultured?

Decided the $10 wifi wasn’t worth it, especially from Intelsat, whom I haven’t had the best experiences with.



Got a Pineapple Margarita mocktail this time. Gonna try to make it all the way down the mocktail menu. Some chips and nuts came with it.




And here’s the caviar.



Confession time: I have no idea how to eat this. I just ordered it because it looked interesting. I ended up piling everything up onto a cracker like I was building a taco and just shoving the whole thing into my mouth.

It tasted pretty good, but it feels like it was mainly the salmon doing the heavy lifting of the flavor. The caviar just kind of tasted like wet salt. Like little popping boba pearls of salt instead of sugar. Not sure how much they added to the culinary experience, or why they’re so desirable. But what do I know?



With such a late departure time, the first meal was billed as a series of light bites. For my main, I ordered the salmon salad. The salad was a really strange mix of ingredients that I would not have thought to put together. I’m sure some professional chef put a lot of thought into the composition of this dish, and I’m sure it’s not just a random mix of whatever leftover veggies were lying around the kitchen… but that’s what it tasted like to me.



The sun was starting to rise again over the horizon. The time zones get so weird when I’m flying the wrong way around the world.



Having not learned my lesson at all from the Port, I decided to try the Sauternes. They had a Premier Grand Cru Classe en 1855 – a bit nicer than just the Grand Cru they were pouring in business, not that I can taste the difference (also I find it interesting how they left off the 1855 in the title on the menu; maybe they were worried people would confuse it with the vintage year?).




I found the Sauternes more palatable than the Port. Maybe it’s just because I asked for a smaller pour, though.




With the sun coming up, I decided now would be a good time to take a nap. I asked the FAs to make up 2A into a bed for me, where I napped for a bit.



I drifted in and out of sleep the whole time – never really fully falling asleep. Still, I felt decently rested and decided to get up as we were leaving India.



Back in 1A, people have commented that these ex-Cathay planes have some upkeep issues, and indeed not only is there a lot of noticeable scuffing on the storage cover above, but the compartment door for the life jacket also wouldn’t stay closed.



I nursed a cup of English Breakfast Tea as I tried to wake up and make some progress on this trip report.



Soon they came and plated breakfast for me, starting with some yogurt. It was pretty good. Nothing too special, but good.



I got the congee, which was a bit spicier than expected. It was warm and filling, and had some decent kicks of flavor. Way too much ginger, though; I ended up picking quite a few strands out.




Ending with an off-menu dessert that my FA recommended back when I had dinner but agreed to defer until later in the flight, along with a cup of coffee. A perfectly filling breakfast.



All three pax in F were up at this point, so I opened the window to get a glimpse of China below.




With about an hour awkwardly left to go in the flight, I decided to check out the entertainment system. The headphones were... very bad. They were not only cheap, but they had two prongs that didn't match the two prongs in the seat, so they came with an adapter to turn it down to one prong, but then only one ear was getting audio. It was not a great experience.



I put on some random anime movie I'd seen before to pass the time, and a few minutes in noticed that something was very off about it.



The movie was dubbed in English, but it was not the official English dub which I'd seen previously in theaters. This script sounded like it was fed through Google Translate and then handed off to the first three people they could find online who almost passed a semester of introductory English to "voice act." It was full of grammar mistakes, the subtitles didn't match the spoken words, the English was amateur (is there any major accent of English that pronounces the l in salmon? Google says no) - how does a supposedly world class airline end up with something like this on their entertainment system? It was genuinely the funniest thing I'd seen in a while, though I'm sure entirely unintentionally.

(Random tangent I'm adding after the fact; feel free to ignore this entire paragraph. I Googled this and fell down a very deep internet rabbit hole, but to summarize, apparently this is a very common phenomenon of Japanese anime getting two separate English dubs, once by a Western company and again by a company in Southeast Asia. Supposedly, a lot of Asian distributors either can't or won't license the North American / European English dub of these shows, and the Japanese studios don't produce English localizations themselves, so they'll simply make their own instead. Evidently Qatar licensed the Southeast Asian English Dub of this movie instead of the Crunchyroll one. I'm seeing people on reddit say that Netflix in Europe is also airing this particular dub. Is this why half the internet seems to despise English dubbing? Is this what they've been watching all this time? Poor souls. It never occurred to me that that millions of people would simply be watching the same thing in the same language voiced completely differently. I'm learning once again that the world is bigger than I thought - but isn't that the whole point of travel?)



So there I sat, watching some horrendous bootleg dub of a movie on crappy headphones that only worked in one ear, sitting in my first class seat, as we began the customary plunge through the clouds to land into Hong Kong.






Welcome to Hong Kong.






This was a delightful flight. The seat was old but comfortable, the food was good, the flight attendants were wonderfully friendly, and the inflight entertainment was absolutely riotous (maybe unintentionally, but still). The lounge was beautiful and full featured - the nap rooms were a lifesaver. My only knocks were the poor maintenance of the seat itself, the fact that maybe the footwell could've been a little bit wider, the chaos when boarding and the general unpleasant nature of a bus gate, and the fact that in the lounge, the particular dishes I ordered were quite mediocre and that there was a wait for a lot of the facilities. Okay, that sounds like a lot when I itemize them all out. Still, this easily ranks as one of the best flights I've ever taken. If the price is right, I'd certainly consider it again. And also, shout out to Cathay Pacific for installing these seats way back in, when, 2007? The fact that they've held up so well even all these years later is a testament to how incredible I remembered Cathay being back in those days.

Oh, also these Cathay 777's have interactive moving maps, unlike the Q Suites plane I flew earlier. Forgot to mention that.



And like that, all good things came to an end as I stepped into Hong Kong.




A quick walk through the bowels of HKG took me to a completely empty immigration line, where an officer checked my passport and waved me through in just a few seconds without asking any question.

I could've sworn the last time I entered Hong Kong on a US passport before the pandemic, I used the e-gates. I had to go to an officer this time - am I just misremembering?





13 minutes. It took exactly 13 minutes from when we parked at the gate and the seatbelt sign was turned off to when I was standing at the Airport Express platform. Impressive. To be fair it helped that I knew not to stop at the airport to waste time buying tickets here.





And a quick 24 minutes later, I was on Hong Kong Island.



For anyone who doesn't know, by the way, for rides on the Airport Express departing the airport (and only on the Airport Express, and only when departing from the airport), you can buy your tickets after you get off, instead of waiting in line at the airport.



Also, and this was news to me, the MTR now finally takes tap-to-pay NFC credit cards directly on the (blue) fare gates. Nice. No need to get an Octopus card anymore. (It does not appear as though these blue gates have made their way to the Airport Express yet).




I forgot how humid Hong Kong gets in the summer. It's stifling.



The hotel I'd be staying at is the Southside by Ovolo, a Design Hotel participant in the Bonvoy program. I don't normally stay at these because they have so few elite benefits, but this particular hotel confirmed over email that they do offer free breakfast to Titanium members who book through the official Marriott app, and the price was ridiculously cheap, so I went for it. It's right around the corner from an MTR station, so transit wasn't too bad.



Surprisingly, this building has a 13th floor. A pretty rare sight in Hong Kong, if I remember correctly.



And here's my room. Shockingly spacious by Hong Kong standards.






Decent views outside of the trains and Ocean Park's cable car.




Breakfast in the morning was in the restaurant downstairs.




A fairly simple buffet spread, with some dishes I absolutely would not have expected for breakfast (a full cooked slab of chicken breast?). Waiters also offered to bring you coffee or tea.



The offerings did seem to change daily. The second morning, I got chicken nuggets instead.

This hotel did the trick. Good access to transit and elite recognition that went above what I expected. Unfortunately the noise isolation isn't great; I could hear the cars going by outside all night, or at least, I would have, if the A/C didn't drown it out by being even louder. I ended up sleeping with earplugs in. Still, for the price, convenience, and overall amount of space I got, I'm happy enough that I'd come back.