krazykanuck

So about this one: Y'all have had a break from my TRs because all I've been doing in the past 6 months are domestic F/Y flights. Which nobody really cares about. Now is time to cash in my hard earned miles!

I had wanted to visit Australia for a while (continent 5 of 6), and with the AUD cratering against the USD it seemed like a decent time to plan a trip. Oz Fest 13 was also happening, so I wanted to fold that in. To get to Asia, I snagged a CX F award to HKG via LAX. The onward award to Australia was easy because TG is very open with J award availability. For the flight home, I knew what I wanted. VA J direct to LAX. I stalked it and booked via DL right when the booking window opened. For the flight back to IAH, Delta.com was being completely uncooperative, wanting way more miles to get to IAH vs LAX, or sending me to IAH via SLC and ATL and wasting my entire Memorial Day in addition to more miles. So I gave up and booked a dirt cheap F fare on United, direct to IAH, and at the end of the day so I could have a day in LA. I hope that 200% PQM comes in handy later this year...

Now of course like any true flyertalker, I can't leave well enough alone and tweaked the itinerary half way through the trip when availability opened on VA 1 (SYD-LAX) which featured the only 777 to date which has VA's new Business Class. So I booked a quick VA Y flight to go from the Gold Coast to Sydney for a night and picked up my modified VA J flight.

Summary of miles earned and burned/cash for air and hotel:

AA/CX F: IAH-HKG; burned 60,750 AA miles (67,500 miles is the old award chart, less 10% AA cardholder credit)
Westin LAX: paid $111 pre-tax
Conrad Hong Kong: $0; burned Hilton free weekend night certificate
The Salisbury (YMCA Hong Kong): $150 post tax
TG J: HKG-MEL: burned 30,000 UA miles
VA Y: MEL-BNE: paid $80
Hilton Surfers Paradise: paid $112 USD/nt
VA Y: OOL-SYD: paid $100something
VA J: SYD-LAX: burned 80,000 DL Skypesos
UA F: LAX-IAH: paid $262

Trip Report Segments

AA F (IAH-LAX) and the Westin LAX
CX F (LAX-HKG) and the LAX Qantas First Lounge
Conrad Hong Kong
Two(ish) days in HKG and the Salisbury
TG J (HKG-BKK-MEL) and Melbourne
VA Y (MEL-BNE) and Hilton Surfers Paradise
Oz fest!
VA Y (OOL-SYD) and a night of Vivid Sydney
VA new J (SYD-LAX)
Memorial Day in LA and UA F (LAX-IAH)

Day 0

I left the office around 2 pm to head home, grab my bag and my Super Shuttle to the airport. Due to the worse than usual, and earlier than usual rush hour Houston traffic didn't get to IAH until around 5:00 pm. With no line in either the AA first class lane or Precheck I was airside by 5:10 and headed to Terminal D to check out my lounge options. The new Admirals Club is not open yet, and funnily enough when I asked at check in, she asked me "do you have any info on when it's supposed to open?!" I'm guessing not anytime soon with that question coming from an AAgent...

Anyway I wondered over to the BA First lounge and presented my AA F and CX F BPs. The wonderfully patient lounge dragon looked up the rules and called a couple colleagues before letting me in. Still not sure I should have access as I read the rules myself, but I appreciate her putting in the effort to check and giving me access.

BA First Lounge IAH

I'm not really sure why BA operates two premium lounges at IAH, 1 for F and OW Emeralds and 1 for F/J and lesser OW members when they have all of 2 flights a day to LHR. The lounge is rather small but well appointed. There is a hot soup, cold sandwiches, and a variety of other nibbles (look at me, I can speak British too!)

The highlight is the bar though. Free pour Woodford Reserve is the bourbon and both Tanquarey 10 and Bombay Sapphire are two gins on offer and they had a decent bottled beer selection including 2-3 local brews. I spent a pleasant couple of hours here before hiking all the way back to Terminal A for my flight to LAX. To modify a Ferris Bueller quote, if you have the means, I highly recommend visiting this lounge. It was a virtual sanctuary compared to the KLM Crown Lounge which I usually use and have been disappointed with the decline in food and beverage quality over the last year.

Food area of the lounge



Seating and bar area in the back



Beer and some delicious chili



Bar close up

krazykanuck

Friday May 20
AA 5933
IAH-LAX
Seat 2A

Hiking back to Terminal A and about to board, I realized I had zero cash on me which isn’t a great idea for international travel. I went back to find the Chase ATM and ran back near the food court and then boarded.

Unlike UA or DL, no PDB of any kind was offered. Our FA seemed content to just stand in the galley and play with her iPhone. I wish I was making this part up. After take off while she was taking drink orders she informed us that cAAtering had either forgotten to or not bothered to load the first class snacks for this flight, which because it was after 8 pm was already only a snack basket flight Here she did what she could and after helping the Y drink service brought the Y buy on board snack selection so we could have whatever we wanted from there.

Most of the F cabin went to sleep shortly after take off while I watched a couple episodes of Veep on my iPad. Our FA was nowhere to be seen after the snack service, so any drink refills required ringing the call button and then she’d happily bring you what you wanted.

We landed at SFO777’s favorite, the AA bus terminal. A quick drive over to the real airport and since my bag was checked all the way to HKG I went straight for the Westin shuttle (which amazingly was in front of the terminal as I walked out) and was at the hotel in a few minutes.

Overall this flight wasn’t that great. I’d be really annoyed if I had paid or used miles/stickers to upgrade from Y for no meal and virtually no service. But as it was just a tack on flight to my CX F award, I suppose I can’t complain too much.

Westin LAX

Since LAX has more airport hotels than you can shake a stick at, I went mostly on price. With my corporate rate at $111 and being rather close to the airport, it won. Can’t say too much other than the internet was fast, the bed was comfortable, and I slept like a rock until just before 6 am. I lucked out (again) as the shuttle was loading up just as I walked into the lobby around 6:30 and I was airside by 7.





The next morning

krazykanuck

Qantas First Class Lounge

I killed my time in the FC lounge upon presenting the lounge invite that I was given at the CX check in desk. I knew I’d be eating on the plane for 14 hrs, so I kept it light and had the egg white omelette with a cappuccino and a glass of Laurent Perrier.







After some final calls with the family and lounging on the red chairs that overlook the terminal, I had a flat white and departed for the gate.

Saturday May 21
CX 897
LAX-HKG
Seat 1A

Oh where to start. I write this segment as a lovely Malaysian woman just refilled my glass of Krug as they are restarting the IFE system because some part of the aircraft far away from my cacoon in 1A is having issues. We still have 11:30 to go before HKG. So let’s back up a bit.





Boarding began a few minutes behind schedule, but we departed more or less on time. Upon walking down the F/J jet bridge I was escorted to 1A. Over the next 10 minutes the purser and senior purser both came over and introduced themselves, addressing me as Mr. Krazykanuck every interaction. They dropped off PJs, amenity kit, menu, HK landing cards, the lobster amuse bouche (delicious!), and of course a glass of Krug!



We taxied around the airport for about 20 minutes before finally taking off having taxied nearly all the way back to the Westin. I loved watching our ascent through my 3 windows. Immediately after take off the FAs closed the curtains and came around for breakfast orders. I ate in the lounge, so I asked for my breakfast in about 30 minutes and some Jasmine tea in the interim.



So food. Here’s our breakfast menu for today:



For breakfast, I had the fruit, smoothie, and the dim sum. Also some Krug to balance it out. The dim sum was delicious and I loved the chili sauce they serve on the side. Miraculously I managed with the chop sticks and didn’t have to ask for a fork. If you know me, you’d know this was a pretty remarkable accomplishment!





I had started watching the Big Short during breakfast and half way through they had to restart the IFE system and I lost count of the number of apologies in that announcement. I also changed into the really comfy Pye PJs and after my movie decided to take a nap. I slept for 4-5 hrs and the lie flat bed is super comfortable with the mattress pad. The only downside is it was too hot for me to sleep if I had the comforter over me. Without it the cabin was the ideal sleeping temperature so I wound up kicking it to the side. As soon as the FAs saw me awake and watching another movie, they insisted that I have a drink and a snack. I declined the snack, so they brought warmed mixed nuts with the drink. So as to not disappoint my caretakers, asked them to but it back to seat position and fix me an order of the duck noodle soup.



Delicious, again with that chili sauce. This is where I began to fail with the chopsticks. My pride got in the way and I refused to ask for a fork, so I managed with the big soup spoon and the pointy sticks.

Somewhere in here the romcom I was watching ended and I turned to “The Affair”. Pretty good, if not a bit confusing of a show on Showtime. Also with only ~3.5 hrs left to HKG meant it was dinner time! And back to Krug time! Based on the composition of the other 5 people in F, none of them appeared to be drinking champagne…

Dinner menu and wine list







To start: Caviar; in my limited experience I have not been a huge fan, but when served with all the garnishes it was good. Definitely a rare treat.



Second course: Chicken tortilla soup. This one completely missed the mark. First, there was no chicken in it, and second, there was no taste or spice to it. It tasted like Campbell’s tomato soup with little tortilla strips on top.



Third course: Caesar salad. Another hit, between the pine nuts, the prosciutto, it was a great salad



Fourth course: Sea bass. Given the choice between fish, the vegetarian meal, and the beef, I didn’t want to chance beef on a plane, especially 11 hrs into the flight. Turns out I made the right choice because the sea bass was phenomenal. Light and perfectly cooked with a nice sauce. The veggies were also well cooked. I changed from the Krug to a Chablis for this portion of the meal which went nicely with the fish. Definitely restaurant quality, IMO.



Fifth course: Cheese plate. Ugh. I was so stuffed but couldn’t turn it down. I had the baby swiss, blue, and camembert cheeses. They were served nicely with grapes, crackers, and some port for good measure.



Fifth and a half course: Fresh berries with vanilla crème sauce. I wasn’t going to order this but she with the personable smile insisted. She also insisted on refilling my glass of Krug. I put up no protest at all.



Please stop course: Pralines, with a side of Johnny Blue.



And with this we began to bring CX 897 to a sad and uneventful end. What a fantastic introduction to true first class international travel! I couldn’t fault the crew or the equipment anything. Not their fault, but we did encounter some pretty rocking turbulence in the last 4 hrs into HKG. The wine glass doesn’t lie!



After deplaning at HKG, I declined to bother checking out the CX Arrival Lounge since there was an Airport Express train about to depart. I took it to Hong Kong station and then took the free shuttle bus to the Conrad from there.

krazykanuck

Conrad Hong Kong
Room booked: King Superior room
Room received: King Executive Peak/Harbor? View
Paid: 1 Citi Hilton free night certificate

Ahh what a nice hotel. Or maybe that’s stream of consciousness talking as I just finished my free 30 minute head and neck massage in the TG spa in BKK. I need to manage to stay awake for 90 minutes until my flight to MEL boards. Oh yeah, hotel. At check in as a Diamond member they insisted on me checking in at the desk in the executive lounge, which I personally thought was kind of pointless, but since my room was on the 58th floor she was able to walk me there using the circular staircase between the lounge and 58.

I was impressed by both the size of the room and the service. I was only in the room for a couple of minutes when a staff member arrived with a complimentary pot of tea. Since it was right around 5, I went back up for cocktail hour and had a couple of beers and some food. The snacks weren’t bad but they also weren’t anything I’d pay for. This night they had sliders, cheese, some barely identifiable little quiche looking things, and a couple other things I wasn’t feeling hungry enough to try.











The next morning, I took my breakfast benefit in the restaurant instead of the lounge, which was a fantastic decision. This has got to be one of the better breakfast spreads I’ve seen. It’s up there with the Hilton Pyramids I stayed at last year for variety and simple excessiveness. I got through a couple plates of tasty fruit, a bunch of dim sum, and a visit to the noodle bar before throwing in the towel!

offerendum

Thanks so far! The view from the Conrad is not first row, but really not bad :-) Did you look both at the Peak and the harbor?

krazykanuck

Hong Kong Day 1

First up was a trip to Lantau Island to see the Big Buddha. The trip on the MRT took probably 45-60 minutes from Admiralty station. While I got there shortly after they opened at 10am for the cable car, I failed to realize you can buy and print tickets in advance to skip the purchase line. So I waited my sweet time, not like I had much else to do. The views from the cable car were pretty great though, including very nice views of HK airport. At 30 mins each way it’s starting to get a little long, especially for me who is, let’s just say not the biggest heights junkie out there…









Didn’t see any cattle up here



Once we got to the base of the town or whatever has spawned to service tourists, you’ll be happy to know that if the craving for a Frappuccino strikes, you’re in luck! There’s a Starbucks up here!



Getting back into Central it was time for lunch. I went to the outpost of Tim Ho Wan which is located underneath the In Town Checkin desks at Hong Kong station. I got an order of 6 steamed dumplings. More chopstick failings ensued. I can’t wait to get back to land of forks. I can still hear the employees mocking me in their native tongue. Or something like that.



Since I finished my lunch snack around 2 and checkin for my new hotel was at 2pm, I decided to switch hotels now instead of at night. I stopped at the Pye store in Pacific Place to get my free CX F gift, picked up my suitcase from the Conrad, and took the red line from Admiralty only 1 stop back over to Kowloon to The Salisbury, a hotel run by the YMCA of Hong Kong.

Now I think I know what you’re thinking. YMCA as in the gym? Yes. I noticed as I walked on the sidewalk outside of the building towards the Star Ferry the unmistakable stench of institutional swimming pool chlorine. But up on the 10th floor where my room was, it was a perfectly comfortable room. At checkin I was told my room had been upgraded to this:



And if you’re asking, this is an upgrade? From what? Well dear reader, glad you asked. The room I had booked had ONE twin bed, not two.

My plan was to go up to Victoria Peak, but by the time I got to the Peak Tram station around 5pm the queue to buy tickets was at least an hour (according to the woman working) and probably a similar length for the tram. So I said F it and went to dinner instead.

Taking the Star Ferry across





Walking through the botanic gardens





Dinner at Little Bao

Little Bao is in the SoHo neighborhood of HK, just a bit south of Central. I had found it on Yelp or something like that, kind of new fusion. It was the only meal besides the Conrad canapés where I didn’t have dim sum or dumplings. Neat little place with not much seating so I was glad I got there right after 6. I got the pork belly bao and a Japanese witbier and both were really good. My neighbor at the bar was a young guy from California who ordered 4 of the baos to try them all and I admire his appetite!



After dinner I walked back to the ferry piers and took the Star Ferry back across so I could get my night skyline shots. I’ll hit the peak tomorrow.







Hong Kong Day 2

Buffet at The Salisbury

I either didn’t know, or forgot, that my rate included the buffet breakfast! Cool. They charge $185 normally but it’s not worth anywhere near that. It sure won’t be confused with the Conrad, but had a nice selection from freshly fried fish, eggs, fruit, dim sum (duh), and more. I got my fill, signed the free meal chit, and headed out having left my bag with the desk for the day.

The first stop of the day was the Nan Lian Gardens and the Chi Lin Nunnery. It was about a 30 min ride on the MTR with one transfer. I checked out the gardens, and was a bit early for the opening of the nunnery so I walked over to 7-11 and got a tasty ginger almond drink for $13 (~2 USD). After checking out the inside of the nunnery (no pics allowed) I took the MTR back across to the island to Admiralty station to take the tram up Victoria Peak - attempt 2.





Over at the Peak Tram, there was essentially no queue to buy tickets ($40 for a round trip ticket) and I only had to wait for the next tram to arrive to head up. It’s a fairly quick ride up, about 10 mins. When we got to the top I spent about an hour walking around the different trails and taking in the views/photos from the observation deck on top of the mall. As I walked past the McDonald’s on level 2 of the mall, I couldn’t resist getting a matcha ice cream cone ($5.50)

View from the peak



Ice cream!



One of the picturesque walking trails



For the ride down, I had one of the two tram cars to myself so I could take all the pics I wanted without interruption.



After the tram ride, I walked back over to SoHo for lunch at a hole in the wall spot, Dim Dang 1968.

I got an order of the steamed shrimp dumplings, the egg white and shrimp spring rolls, and a Coke Zero for $77. The food was delicious and you could taste that they stuffed whole shrimp into the dumplings, as opposed to them being chopped up or prepared another way.





After lunch I took the Star Ferry back across to Kowloon, took a quick walk up the Kowloon Park for a walk around, and then back to the hotel to collect my bag and head to HKG via the Airport Express train. There was another McDonald’s ice cream shack in the park here.

HKG and the Thai Royal Orchid Lounge

Back at HKG, I planned to take a shower so I grabbed some clean clothes from the suitcase and took what felt like a really long train ride from Terminal 2 check in back to the Thai lounge near gate 40. At the lounge the shower was open so I got that out of the way and man did it feel awesome after walking around and sweating all day. But help me out here? What on earth is the thing that looks like it should hold the shower head but doesn’t?



The food on offer included dim sum (pretty tasty), pork buns (not very tasty), as well as some Thai noodles, soup, and some greens to make a salad. Drinks were reasonably quality liquor, Beefeater Gin, Jim Beam Bourbon, and some local beer and Heineken. I passed the time mostly drinking Tsingtao and tapping out some of this TR.





Not a soul was seen in here today…

krazykanuck

TG639
HKG-BKK
14E



This flight featured Thai’s regional business class cabin with the angled lie flat seats. While they don’t quite stack up against VA’s new J or I’d assume most new business class setups, they work ok for these flights.

Hot towels were distributed along with menus and PDBs. Choice of juice, champagne, or water. I went with champagne of course.





TG headphones (pretty poor quality and uncomfortable to wear for even medium periods of time)



Decent menu for the short flight to BKK. I had the Chicken Curry and the Mousse Cake





Salmon appetizer. Meh, but I’m rarely a huge salmon fan if it isn’t cooked.



Chicken curry main. Pretty good, enjoyed with a Singha beer.



Kind of stingy fruit plate but what was there was tasty. Passed on the celery



The Raspberry Mousse was pretty nice.



Flight was overall good and we landed at a bus gate. No effort was made to have a business class bus, though this is a reasonably sized business class.


Thai Royal Orchid Lounge and the Spa

Following the signs for transfer I found myself at the pretty crowded business class lounge. I quickly inquired about spa appointments and was sent across the hall to the Spa where my request for a 30 minute head and neck massage was met with only a 5-10 minute wait. The massage felt great and after a quick 30 mins I was back in the lounge trying to not fall asleep. I had a couple cans of Chang and caught up on emails watching the lounge empty out as the red eye flights were called for boarding.

It took me a good few minutes to walk from the lounge to gate E3, where we were then loaded back up into a bus for another bus gate. Thai ground services again don’t really provide any difference for business class passengers other than letting us board the bus first, which is then shared with the first group of economy pax.

TG465
BKK-MEL
15E

Upon boarding, hot towels were distributed along with menus and PDBs. Choice of juice, champagne, or water. Bet you can't guess what I had to drink

Not going to cover this one in much detail as it was the exact same plane that we had from HKG-BKK. I even slept reasonably well on the overnight flight, getting probably 4-5 hrs of sleep. I ate the first two courses of the meal and called it quits and went to sleep.

Menu





The chicken for dinner was decent but tasted remarkably like a chicken dish I’ve had in SQ Y before. The salmon app isn’t pictured, it looked just as unappealing to me as the app from the prior flight.



Breakfast. Sorry for the poor lighting, the cabin was very dim.







Conclusions about TG J

Overall I thought Thai had a bit of an odd business class service, as they did economy like things such as rolling the rubbish cart up and down the aisle to collect trash as opposed to taking it back to the galley, or had the placemats on the trays with the Thai logo facing the wrong way, or brought food options out with the plastic/foil covers still on the dishes and took them off in front of you. While at the same time serving a $40-50 bottle of champagne in J!

Also while it is a decent lounge and providing spa services for J pax is pretty rare, any other premium ground services for J at BKK are virtually non existent.

Honestly having noting where it could be improved, I'd definitely spend the extra 12,500 UA miles on J over Y if I were to do this route again for a decent sleep down to Australia and lounge access in both HKG and BKK.


Melbourne

Not too much to share here. I was in MEL for about 24 hours, pretty much solely to see a family friend I hadn’t seen in years since they emigrated to Australia from Canada. Since it was raining on Wednesday, we took the free circle tram around Downtown and then stopped at Riverland bar for a drink. We then went to Belgian Beer House for dinner and while I don’t have any pictures it was great. We had the onion rings, calimari, and wings for shared apps and I had the steak night special for $20. After a quick Uber home, we called it a night.

I have to note though that I love the e-passport gates and how it scans your face so you don't even have to speak to an immigration guy.

TG provides an express lane pass, but it was completely unnecessary for me.

krazykanuck

Segments now updated through arrival in Melbourne.

Looking back at the Hilton web site, my view most closely matches that of the Harbour view rooms. The Shangri La also took up a significant portion of my view.

krazykanuck

VA327
MEL-BNE

It was quick to get my BP and tag my own bag to BNE but the bag check line was running slow as molasses. Partly because most of the people in the bag check line hadn’t actually bothered to check in and print their own bag tags. :rolleyes

A quick domestic hop on VA requires little to write about. I asked about J class upgrades and was quickly shut down saying they “don’t do those anymore”. Oh well. I didn’t need to spend the money on an upgrade anyway. The flight was pretty uneventful, other than the chorus of screaming little humans. I also had 2 pretty cool people in my row of A-B-C so we chatted a decent amount during the flight.



Since it crossed lunch time, I got a wrap and a beer for $13 AUD ($10 USD) which I thought was a pretty good deal for being on an airplane, considering a drink alone on a US carrier will set you back $6-8.

Sorry, I was hungry…



When we arrived at BNE, I bought a go card for the bus/train throughout Queensland. Thankfully they take credit cards so I didn’t have to get Aussie cash yet. The Airtrain to the Gold Coast is anything but fast or express, but it is very easy. Get on and sit there until it hits the Nerang station and the transfer to a local bus. The bus was about a 20-25 minute drive followed by a 5 minute walk to the hotel

Hilton Surfers Paradise
Rate paid: AUD$149/nt
Room booked: King Guestroom
Room received: King Deluxe

I checked in and headed up to my slightly upgraded room. As a Hilton Diamond I had access to the executive lounge on the 15th floor without an executive floor upgrade. The room was a good size but a slightly strange layout. I had a good 250 sq ft (my guess) in between the end of my bed and the desk/tv, so good luck watching TV from bed. The room also had a nice sized balcony with a view of the beach. Internet logon was a bit of a pain because it makes you choose a paid internet plan which then magically gets taken off the bill. The internet speed was pretty slow the whole time at the hotel to the point where it was tough to load flyertalk at times. Overall it was a pretty nice room considering the price.







The Executive Lounge had a nice setup and a good cocktail hour from 6-8 pm. Free pour white, red, and sparkling wines and a small selection of beers. Spirits were available on request from the servers. There were also hot hor devours which varied from night to night. Great views from the 15th floor too.

Thursday night a bunch of us Oz Festers met up in the lounge and just grazed on the food and didn’t bother with dinner.

krazykanuck

Friday

I woke up and took my breakfast in the lounge. Not a bad spread, but the only real let down was that there are no hot items available. For diamonds there is a $10 upcharge to take the full buffet in the Salt Grill, which is the hotel restaurant on the 1st floor.

Jamier45 and I had plans to go on a dive this morning. The dive company picked us up about 11 am to drive out to the docks and headed out on the water. I don’t have my dive certification so this was essentially an intro dive, but I really enjoyed it and it was a pretty nice day to be on the water.











After we got back to the hotel we had a couple hours until our normal happy hour in the lounge and our first official Oz Fest event; dinner at Seascape Restaurant. I went for a walk along the beach before happy hour to take a few pictures. Dinner was very good, I only managed to get a picture of my main course (Red Emperor with veggies and potatoes), but the portions left a bit to be desired.







Saturday

Today many of us took our breakfast benefit in Salt Grill, which was a huge upgrade from the executive lounge. The restaurant featured traditional hot items; sausages, beans, pancakes, cooked to order eggs, as well as all the typical cold cuts and fruit (similar to the lounge). When the restaurant was busy the service was a little sluggish. One downside was there was no coffee or espresso machine available for our use, so you had to order from the servers and wait for it to come to you.

Our Saturday activity was a day trip down to Byron Bay. We had a charter bus for the 90 minute drive and then spent a bit over an hour at the Byron Bay lighthouse and lookout point, the most easterly point of Australia.







A couple of OzFesters looking for a good photo, and testing the stability of rocks!



We were also fortunate enough to spot both a Wallaby and a pod of dolphins





After the lighthouse, we drove back into town and spent a couple hours on our own for lunch and wondering around Byron Bay. A few of us walked 15 mins from our bus to Byron Bay Brewery, which is located a bit off the beaten path in a more residential area. Some interesting signs on the walk, but once we got there discovered good beer and cheap food. They had 2 for 1 lunches and there were 6 of us, so with entrees for $28-30, it was $14-15 per person. Beers were $6-8 each

Gotta love the signage here







On the drive back, we stopped at a lookout point at the New South Wales/Queensland state border. We spent some time taking in the views and I got a delicious caramel honey academia nut ice cream cone for $4.50.



Back from our day out, I went for a walk along the beach and snapped some pictures before our exec lounge happy hour and dinner.







For dinner we went to the Kurrawa Surf Life Saving Club, I had the lamb burger for $19, and the beers ran $5-10/pint depending on what you chose. I was too hungry to take pictures. Sorry not sorry!

Sunday

Today was breakfast in Salt Grill followed by a trip to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, where we got to pet and feed kangaroos, get pictures taken holding a koala, and see all other sorts of Australian wildlife.

Traffic stopper



I think this Red Kangaroo is saying “I’m napping, leave me the F alone!”



Me feeding a Kangaroo



Seriously, can I not take one home? I’m sure it’d like my backyard…



Lunch was to be at Currumbin Vikings Surf Club, but by the time we got there at 12:30 pm, myself and a couple of other Oz Festers had planes and trains to catch, so I had a pint, said my farewells, took some pics and headed off to OOL.

The view from the restaurant…





At OOL, the 2 of us on the flight to SYD hit the Virgin Australia lounge for some lunch and a couple of Fat Yaks. It’s a very nice lounge for an airport that serves domestic VA flights and puts most US lounges to shame with its food and drink selections. Lunch on offer included soup, chicken and mushroom risotto (pictured), as well as cold cuts, bread, and a panini machine to toast your sandwich.

krazykanuck

VA528
OOL-SYD



Time for another one-way domestic Y flight. I took a nap for the whole flight and woke up on descent to SYD. That was fast. The flight was on time and the armrest was hogged by a guy with a VA ID badge.

One night in Sydney and a stay at the Novotel Darling Harbor

Novotel Darling Harbor

All the SPG and Hilton properties were near $200, so I decided to try something new as the Novotel was only $119. I took the train from the airport to Central station and walked to the hotel in about 15 minutes. The room was nothing to write home about. Wifi wasn’t free since I wasn’t a member of the Accor program at the time and I couldn’t be bothered to sign up just to use my laptop, since I had internet on my phone.

Central Station at dusk



My super exciting room



Since Vivid Sydney started on Friday, my only plan for the night was to wonder around the harbour and check out the Vivid Sydney sights. I took the train from the Town Hall station to Circular Quay, walked around the Opera House, through the Royal Botanic Garden, and back to Wharf 3 to pick up the ferry to Manly.

Botanic Gardens









The purpose of taking the ferry to Manly was two-fold. One was that I wanted to get pictures from the water. Second was that I wanted to go to the 4 Pines brewpub, which happens to be across from the Manly ferry dock. Dinner and a couple beers were at 4 Pines. The burger was one of the best I’ve had in recent memory, cooked a bit above medium rare, and the beer was delicious. I had a pint of the ESB and a glass of the Russian Imperial Stout.

Uhh…I know the menu said “double meat, double cheese” but this is a bit more than I bargained for.



Ok…I’m full now. I left some bread behind. Stupid carbs.





As luck and timing would have it, I was there on a Sunday and as my hotel receptionist pointed out, if you have an Opal card on Sundays the maximum daily fare is capped at only $2.50. So I paid the ~$15 fare from the airport to Central which effectively took care of all my travel. The Manly ferry alone would have been ~$15 r/t normally, but was $0 for my purposes. I loaded $40 on my Opal card and and left Sydney with about $8 left on my card.

When I got back to the docks, I looped around the other side of the harbour and took the train back to the hotel.

krazykanuck

Monday #1

I woke, quickly packed up and took the train back to the airport. Virgin’s check in counter is all the way at the far end away from the rail station. Check in took only a couple of minutes, was provided a fast track card for immigration and security, and I was quickly airside and decided to hit the American Express lounge.

The Amex lounge is design wise different from the US style Centurion Lounges. More traditional and less modern, but even at 8 am had an open bar, hot breakfast, and like nearly every lounge in Australia, a barista and a big coffee machine to prepare whatever you want. The food was of good quality. I just had a small snack, a flat white, and of course a glass of champagne to get the day off to the right start! The lounge was rather crowded though with most seats taken.



Not a bad place for some plane spotting



#brekkie



Lounge options



Lounge



With the goal of completeness, I made my way to the Air New Zealand lounge near the gate which is the lounge VA J pax are instructed to use since VA doesn’t operate a lounge in the international terminal. While it is a far larger lounge than the Amex, it felt just as busy. As you can see many of the seats were taken around 8:30 am. I don’t know if this is normal, or just the timing since there were UA, TG, VA, and a litany of NZ flights leaving around the same time. SQ is the only other *A lounge in this terminal.

The NZ lounge was better appointed than the Amex one, with a much wider variety of food options and a cook that would make eggs to order. I had another glass of champagne, for research purposes of course to compare. Though I sit here only a few hours later on VA 1 and I can’t remember any decipherable details about either one. They’re both nowhere near Krug on CX!









Cold breakfast options



Shortly before boarding, I headed to gate 53 for VA 1. One thing that is confusing is that even though we were in the all too common cordoned off gate areas for US bound flights, the PA system is area wide. So we kept hearing first, business, and final boarding calls for every single flight leaving from that part of the terminal. We finally boarded 10-15 mins past the time on the boarding pass.

VA 1
SYD-LAX
New Business Class
Seat 9A

I was supposed to be on old J on a flight ex-BNE. But was able to switch that and got a night in Sydney. So all’s well that ends well. What a fantastic looking cabin. Now I’ve walked through many international business class cabins and sat in zero of them, but this has to be one of the coolest looking cabins I’ve seen. The way the black leather and cloth contrasts with the white tabletop surfaces and silver buttons/accents is simply striking.









Shortly after boarding, the FAs brought around amenity kits, PJs, menus, and PDBs - choice of water, champagne, or juice. I of course had champagne. Another nice business class bottle that appears to retail for $80-100 according to my Googling.

I liked how they thought out the storage bins here. There is 1 that is ~1 inch deep which is perfect for passport, pens, etc. There is a slightly deeper one where the IFE controller is which holds the USB charger, the AC plug, and the headphone jack. This bin also has a little light inside of it which turns on automatically once you open it fully so you can see in there without needing other lights on. What’s also nice is this bin can latch closed even with all of your requisite cords running out any which way to your laptop, so you don’t have to feed the cords through a little cutout. A third storage bin which serves doubly as the armrest on the aisle side of the seat holds a bottle of water and the VA provided headphones.

Lots of room (I’m 5’8’’ and with the seat upright could barely touch the ottoman)



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IFE system and other amenities

Virgin disappointingly uses off brand headphones that while they aren’t as crappy as the ones Thai uses (not that it’s a high hurdle to beat…), I quickly put them away and grabbed my Bose pair. The IFE screen provides a great and high quality picture. The touch screen is very responsive and I often found myself just leaving the IFE controller latched and using the touch screen.



Business class bar all ready for its patrons!





The menus for today’s flight:





I chose the garlic bread, soup, beef, and cheese plate. I had the Pinot Noir with the first 2 courses and the tktktk with the cheese. The garlic bread was good, but not as good as the bread on CX. The soup was really nice and light. I am aware of the dangers of ordering beef on planes and while it appears to be cooked well in the photos, it was rather moist and not at all tough. It would be nice had they provided an actual steak knife though… Cheese selection was really nice and went great with the wine.

Amuse bouche and champagne to start



Soup to start. The table was presented much more like CX F than TG J; at the start of each meal the FA would pull out your table, and assemble the tablecloth and utensils.



Beef. Potatoes were delicious too!



Cheese course



I finished off much of my viewing of the Titanic and visited the onboard bar for a bit and chatted with a couple of Aussies on their way to the US for work and an American who was a travel writer who had spent a month down under. After a couple more glasses of wine and probably 5 hours into the flight it was time for a nap. The bed is very comfortable when made up and I had more than adequate space. I am a side sleeper and had probably ~2 inches between my hip and the top of the tray table. I slept for 3-4 hours before waking up and finishing Titanic.

One neat thing in the IFE system is that the staff would use it to make announcements by a text box popping up over whatever you were watching as opposed to making loud PA announcements, so a bit after waking up we got a message saying “If you’re feeling peckish, there are juices and snacks set up in the business class bar”. They had set out fruit cups and a variety of fruit juices.

About 60-90 mins outside of LAX, breakfast was served. I only ate about half of it but it was pretty good. Even the scrambled eggs were better than your average plane eggs.



After arrival at LAX we were through immigration pretty much immediately and I dragged my suitcase over to the United terminal to check it for the final leg back to Houston.

krazykanuck

Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier, and the obligatory In and Out Burger

I had plans to have a nice relaxing Memorial Day in LA. But then the friend I planned to meet up with had plans, many of the places I wanted to check out (microbreweries) are closed Mondays, and most things in LA are far from each other. So I walked out to the PCH and picked up the #3 bus to Venice Beach. I walked 2-3 miles up the beach until I got to Santa Monica Pier and headed back towards LAX.

I stopped for lunch at the famous In and Out Burger which lies under the approach path. Now while I won’t declare it better than my beloved Whataburger, it was pretty damn good. Double double animal style.





Back at LAX I went through precheck at Terminal 7 and had a terrible time finding the connector to T6 because there isn’t a single sign. Of course in T6 there are signs for T7, but not the other way around.

Alaska Board Room

Since I don’t have UA lounge access and I wasn’t about to hike all the way to TBIT to the Korean lounge, the AS lounge would serve today’s lounge duty, accessed via Priority Pass.

This is a mostly text only portion. I had a couple of draft beers from a local brewery our of Torrance, CA and messed around on the internet. The most interesting part was that the soup of the day was Hot Dogs. They had buns and condiments too. Happy Memorial Day!

LAX-IAH
UA1730

There was a mess of delays on the IAH-LAX route today , I think due to weather. I was originally scheduled on UA1730 due to depart at 7:00pm but was pushed to nearly 8pm and due to arrive at nearly 1 am, so I I was able to get rebooked on UA1203 which was due to depart at 1:44 and actually left around 4:15pm. Still delayed, but either way I got home 3-4 hours earlier.

I have to say they had an amazing turnaround time on this one. They turned this 737 in 45 mins, from landing to departure. Despite that our awesome first class FA managed to squeeze in an open bar PDB service.

Service started with drinks and mixed nuts. I think they left the nuts in the warmer too long beacuase the nuts were very chewy/mushy. I didn’t eat many of them. Dinner choices were the hot cilantro chicken sandwich, or cold chicken salad. I went for the hot sandwich and it was delicious. Good taste and a nice amount of chicken.

PDBs. What’s up with the translucent blue cups though?



Main meal



Having been awake for some unknown number of hours, I fell asleep after dinner until we were on descent into Houston.

Bags took a few minutes longer than usual but before too long I was in an Uber for the drive home to wrap up a great trip!

offerendum

I love the Kangaroo-pics - really cool!