February 2008 Archives

The check-in procedure, at least in Bangkok, was pretty extraordinary. The First Class check-in desk was ultra high tech and cool - something one would normally expect to see on Star Trek, one of the good series, not Voyager or anything like that. After we were checked, tabulated, vetted, and searched we were escorted to Passport Control by one of the agents. Although there were fairly good sized lines at all of the desks there was none at the one labeled Diplomatic and VIP's. And that's just where we were escorted to. I guess it's official. Mary's a VIP and I'm honored to be her own personal flunky. Mom would be so proud. Needless to say, Mary was a little uncomfortable but I decided to do my best to give off VIP vibes.

After scooting through Passport Control the agent continued to escort us to the Sakura Lounge, JAL's lounge in the Bangkok airport. We were led to a private room, which turned out to be rather nice as the main lounge permits smoking everywhere. And since most of the clientele is Japanese, the lounge was a bit smoky, kind of like the Pacific Ocean is a bit wet. We relaxed there until our flight was called and then proceeded to the gate, going through security on our way.

Boarding was efficient and quick. Again, we weren't called till after the majority of the other passengers had boarded. JAL's First Class cabin is on the lower level and front of the 747. My only complaint with this location is that the nose gear is directly under the cabin and when it deploys and is stowed it's incredibly noisy. Scary sounding noisy. Fortunately, as a former aerospace engineer I was pretty confident that the screeching, scraping and thumping noises was not the result of some essential piece of aircraft structure breaking off and sending us all to our doom. But it sounds a lot like it.

The seats on JAL were not our favorite. First, they're obviously designed for their primary customer, small Japanese men. They're a little too narrow to be really comfortable for us. And unlike the first class seats on Cathay, Virgin, or British Airlines, there are no easy to reach pockets for storing essentials like magazines, water bottles and Dramamine. In fact, since the seats have so much leg room, in order to reach the pocket in the back of the seat in front of you, you have to unbuckle your seat belt and bend way forward, unless you have unusually long, apelike arms.

On the other hand, the seats do recline fully and they supply a nice blanket for long flights to sleep under. On the other, other hand (we're up to three - are you keeping count?), the controls for the seat back recline and foot rest are located on the inside of the arm rest. This positioning, coupled with our beefy thighs, produced two fun incidents. In the first, Mary needed to get up from her seat to visit the little girl's room. As she started scooting forward in the seat her thigh would hit the switch raising the footrest. At which point Mary was stuck and couldn't get out. So she held the switch down and retracted the footrest. She then started to inch forward at which point the switch was pressed down, footrest came up, and so on and so on. As Mary said it was quite a bit like an I Love Lucy episode.

In our second case of seat mayhem, I scooted forward to get something out of the pocket in the seat back ahead of me. While I was doing that I unknowingly hit the switch to drop the back down into the fully reclined position. When I sat back down I fell backwards and Mary's view of me consisted of a pair of legs pointing pretty much straight up. From this point onwards we considered our seats out to get us and acted accordingly.

Our first flight on JAL was just under 6 hours from Bangkok to Toyko-Narita Airport. Since the flight left at 11:00pm Bangkok time and we'd be going east through two time zones that meant that we'd arrive in Tokyo very early in the morning - around 5:00am. For some reason, neither of us could really get much sleep, I think because the seats, as previously mentioned, are a little narrow and the seat cushions a little too hard. And by this point we were scared that they'd try and fold us into a origami crane or something. So we arrived in Tokyo excited but kind of tired.

There was a snack served on board shortly after we took off but both of us decided to go with dozing rather than eating. However, since we weren't all that successful even at that, we both opted for a full Japanese breakfast before landing. It was....interesting. I liked it, Mary was a little less enthusiastic. The main entrée is a piece of broiled fish which I can see no problem with for a breakfast item. The egg omelet pieces (solid rectangles of cooked egg) were okay though they're frequently served cold, not exactly my cup of tea. The other items on the breakfast tray were pretty hit and miss. I always like a bowl of miso soup, but pickles, one of my favorite things in the world, just don't excite me first thing in the morning. Still and all, it was interesting and I'm glad to have tried it.

Service was pretty omnipresent. Cabin crew seemed to circulate through the first class cabin frequently, like every fifteen minutes or so, unlike domestic flight attendants who disappear after meal service until shortly before landing. If the JAL flight attendants catch you awake they immediately begin to ply you with snacks, drinks, shoulder rubs, that kind of thing. It's better to either feign sleep if you don't want to be bothered or to put on the headphones and watch a movie or something. By the way, I'm kidding about the shoulder rubs, I think. I didn't actually ask for one and wonder what would happen if I did?

Landing and disembarkation were relatively quick. Japan now is requiring all visitors to undergo fingerprinting and a photo on entry. But it's all electronic and totally non-invasive so no big deal. It helps that we were one of the first flights in that morning so the airport was very uncrowded.

Overall, we'd rate JAL below Cathay and Virgin and possibly roughly equivalent to British Air (though to be honest we've never sampled First Class on British Air and the Business Class we did use once was around five years ago). We'll have a better feel for that in a few weeks when we do take a BA First Class flight. The JAL service was on par or maybe even slightly better than Cathay's and a bit better than the British carriers. And as compared to domestic American carriers, well, it's not even in the same space-time continuum.

The main drawback with JAL is that their seats, while offering gobs of leg room, are not of a standard to compete with Cathay or Virgin (or as far as we can tell from others' opinions, Singapore Airline). If these were updated to a more modern configuration I think they'd be giving Cathay (our new Gold Standard) a run for their money.

We arrived on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong. Bangkok International Suvarnabhumi Airport is new and very nice. According to articles we saw later there are some maintenance issues, apparently, but we didn't notice anything untoward. We arrived in the middle of a pack o' planes and immigration was a little jammed up but we still got though in around 20-30 minutes, grabbed our bags and entered the main terminal where representatives from the Sukhothai, our hotel in Bangkok, were waiting to meet us. I'm guessing that they maintain a desk there in the airport as they had two people to take our bags and place them in the car that was waiting outside. When we left a few days later they had someone meet our car when we arrived at the airport and take the bags right into the terminal to the JAL desk. He then stayed with us till we entered Passport Control. That's service.

The trip to the hotel was relaxing enough on the highway, but when we got on the city streets - wow! Bangkok is the most congested city I've ever seen. It's insane. From stuff I've seen, like on Amazing Race, India probably has Bangkok all beat to hell in the congestion sweepstakes, but my depth perception impaired self found Bangkok quite scary enough, thank you very much.

Our hotel, which I'll write up in a little more detail later, was beautiful. Lots of ponds and alcoves with statues and brick tupas or whatever they're called. I liked it a lot. And again the service - weee!

We spent the majority of our time while we were in Bangkok using a local guide service (Trails of Indochina) to take us around. One look at the traffic and the layout of Bangkok and we're pretty happy we did. In essence the guide service gave us our own personal guide and a van with a driver for the two days and an itinerary for both days that hit a lot of highlights in and outside the city.

For instance, the first day we visited the foremost Buddist temple in Bangkok, which as our guide pointed out, was just one of the total of 411 temples, just in the city alone. Don't ask about the country as a whole - it's something in the tens of thousands. Thais do seem to like their temples. After touring a couple or three I can see why. The temples are frequently beautiful, impressive, monumental, outlandish, and usually all of the above. Having a guide along was great as she taught us some basics of how to behave in the temple (drinking beer and rubbing the monks' bald heads, especially if you're a woman, seems to be frowned on - go figure).

After the first temple, there was a second, a third, a fourth, and somewhere around sixty two we begged for mercy. Well, not really. We went to a total of two temples and begged off on a third, not because we didn't want to see it but because at the point at which we were offered the opportunity to see it, the daylight was waning and we'd already lost 20% of our body weight through perspiration. And we were bushed.

After the temples we had lunch, arranged by the tour company at a restaurant on the river somewhere in town. We're not sure where, we were just passengers. From the appearances though I'd say this was a restaurant that had arranged with a fair number of other tour companies to bring their clientele there. The food was considerably toned down, though we told our guide we liked things spicy. It was apparent that she was fairly surprised and not convinced about our ability to handle the real stuff. The lunch was quite flavorful but not nearly as spicy as Thai food we've consumed elsewhere. She compromised and had the restaurant add a spicier beef dish to our lunch, I'm relatively sure in order to test us. We passed. The lunch, by the way, was enormous. Either they looked at us and said - "oh, those people can eat a lot" or they think all Americans can eat a lot. We tried, but even we, tried and true trenchermen that we were, could not eat everything they gave us.

After lunch, groaning in body if not in mind, we toured some markets, specifically flower markets where we watched them making flower garlands called Phuang Malai or something like that. There's lots of other stuff they make too, which was pretty intriguing, at least Mary thought so. I enjoyed it though it's not exactly alligator wrestling.

To top off the day we took a cruise along the Chao Phraya river, the main waterway through the center of Bangkok and back through a lot of the canals, along which live an intriguing collection of people. I'm not sure what the boat we used was called, but they featured prominently in a James Bond movie of my youth, Man With The Golden Gun. Take one river canoe, the shallower the draft the better, and mount a automobile motor on the back using a very long shaft with a propeller on the end to propel the boat. If at all possible, try not to muffle the exhaust too much as this just lessens the effect. It's great! We had a blast shooting up and down the river and back through the canals. Sure we were slightly deaf afterwards, but it was great!

Life along the canals is very emblematic of Bangkok in general. There are tumbledown shacks that seem like they would need only the wake of an boat just fractionally larger than our own to send them crashing down into the canal, side by side with mansions that wouldn't be out of place on a Palm Beach waterway. It's kind of interesting to see it now. I imagine in a decade or two, if the economic trends continue for Asia as they are, many of the hovels will be torn down and replaced with condos. It'll be cleaner but not as interesting.

The second day started with a long drive out to the famous floating markets in Damnoen Saduak. Here again we got our own boat with oversize engine though slightly smaller then the one the previous day - it probably came from a compact car. The use of the large engines bemused us greatly as the canals are narrow enough and wind so much that no one can get any real speed up before they have to throttle down. Though they do sound impressive. It was interesting to see the market with lots of stuff being sold from shops lining the canals (mostly tourist junk) as well as the boats selling foodstuffs and fruits and vegetables. Our guide bought a number of things to sample including bananas (a variety our guide called vitamin bananas) coated with corn starch and flour with sesame seeds and fried - delicious, and I don't even normally like bananas. Mary only got a couple of pieces but that was because she was sitting all the way in the front of the boat, at least a foot and half away. Too bad! We also sampled some fruit of various types that we've mostly never seen before. All were quite good.

After the market we drove back to town to visit two famous sites, the Teak Palace and the Jim Thompson house. The Palace was a residence of the Thai royal family built early in the last century using European architectural techniques and Thai materials. It's quite attractive and because it's almost entirely made of wood, more interesting than a lot of the stone edifices that European royalty like to build for themselves. As a change of pace anyhow.

The Jim Thompson house was the abode of an American ex-OSS officer who came back and settled in Thailand after WWII. He became enamored with the Thai silk industry and from the accounts pretty much singlehandedly renovated the industry and made the products popular throughout the rest of the world. Along with that he also liked Thai art and sculpture and he took a number of Thai teak houses and combined them in Bangkok to make a singular residence for himself. The effect is quite stunning. When he disappeared during a trip to Malaysia during the Sixties his house and art collection were saved by a organization that preserved them and put them on display for greasy palmed tourists like ourselves. The gardens, the houses and the art works were certainly one of the highlights of the whole trip to Bangkok.

After we finished the Teak Palace tour we adjourned to a lunch counter for our noontime repast. We had told our guide that we would love to try some Thai street food but I think she was a little scared that we'd either contract something intestinal and highly resistant to antibiotics or that we were still making it up about liking spicy food. Or possibly she thought that what we ate in America that was called authentic Thai food was the same as calling KFC authentic pan fried chicken. So she compromised by taking us to something where we could sit down inside but the clientele was all Thai - no tourists. Then just to make sure she apparently told the cooks to go lightly on the peppers and stuff. Even so it was mighty spicy. So spicy that I did a real numbskull thing. Mary and I each ordered a dish. Mine turned out to be a bit spicier than hers but I was enjoying it. A lot. Then our guide brought a couple of other dishes for us to try, still convinced that because of our size, we would be ravenous if we did not eat the equivalent of a side of beef at each meal, and we might take it out by devouring the guide or something. In any case, when she brought the second set of dishes I looked over and said to myself - hmm, more food and ignored what she was saying about the dishes, specifically that the minced pork salad was really spicy. All I could see was a fresh, green, crisp salad with a tart dressing and some small pieces of pork. Perfect, I thought - something to cool the burning sensation I was experiencing after eating my first dish. But try as I might, no matter how much salad I ate, the burning didn't diminish: indeed, it got hotter and hotter. I drank my whole bottle of water. I drank a whole glass of iced coffee and coconut milk. I drank Mary's water. I was sweating profusely. When I pointed out to Mary that I just couldn't seem to cool my taste buds off she noted that it was no wonder. The salad that I was bolting down was incredibly spicy. My mouth was so cauterized that I didn't realize that each bite was increasing the pain and not giving me cooling relief. It took about an hour or so till my mouth quit feeling like the fiery pits of hell. But it all tasted very, very good.

Other observations about our time in Bangkok. The people seem to be genuinely pleasant and friendly. The food is very hot. Don't even think about driving in Bangkok, the traffic is insane. Basically one sits at an intersection until someone in the cross traffic leaves just the smallest hole in the flow and then the whole line of traffic you're in just bull their way into the street. Weirdly enough for a place with the densest and most incredibly volatile traffic I've ever seen there's little honking nor shouting, screaming or cursing. Maybe they keep it all inside.

We did use a tuk-tuk at one point which is a motorized trike which was cool. Though the benefits of them are marginal - they use up almost as much space as a compact car. One can get around using motorcycle taxis. They're basically motorcyclists that belong to one or more taxi companies (you can recognize them as they all wear orange vests) that will take passengers from point to point. You just get on the back of the bike and hold on. Pretty useful as the bikes and their riders have no discernible sense of fear nor mortality and they dart through and around and possibly over traffic everywhere. Mary wouldn't agree to try one as she seems to have this unreasonable fear of death or at least dismemberment, so maybe next time.

Bangkok as a tourist destination - wonderful. We suspected that we'd have a good time but I have to say we were bowled over by the amount of things to do and the food, and the scenery. We were less bowled over by the climate, hot and sticky 365 days a year seems to be the rule. And to be perfectly honest, the city is an amazing conglomeration of ultra-modern and ramshackle ruin side by side. As a matter of fact, one needs to understand that Bangkok is completely chaotic, pretty dirty, possibly somewhat insane, and utterly amazing. I'd encourage anyone to go and give it a go. And from the looks of it a lot of European tourists are doing just that.

We had a late flight out our last day so we opted for a late check out and then hung around the hotel and relaxed. Mary got a massage and pronounced it good. I had a few beers and a cigar in the bar and pronounced it good also. As we were wandering around the property Mary noticed that there was a YWCA next door. This coupled with the YMCA next to the Peninsula at our last stop leaves us wondering. We're not sure what we're wondering, but wondering we are.

Homewood Suites, San Diego

So to catch up on the hotels we've been staying in. The Homewood Suites San Diego Airport (Liberty Station) was pretty decent. For a quick overnight stay it has everything the business or leisure traveler can want except a restaurant. And even at that there's a breakfast served in the morning with a hot item or two.

The rooms are pretty spacious, on order with say a Embassy Suites though the living room area has been compressed somewhat and a full kitchen has been shoe horned in. The bedroom is reasonably spacious with lots of room to stretch, if you're inclined that way.

The kitchen is fully equipped so if you're someone who doesn't like eating out, or like us, someone who likes bringing leftovers back from the restaurant, than this should work out pretty well for you. We didn't have any leftovers so we couldn't try out the fittings. No mini-bar, either, so no snacks, though there is a small sundries and snack area down next to the check-in desk if you get the munchies late at night.

In contrast to the size of the suite overall, the bathroom was miniscule. It had all the standard less expensive shampoos and soaps. Bath towels were of less than luxurious standard but acceptable.

Overall, Homewood was a pretty good place to stay. The addition of an exercise room as well as self service laundry was greatly appreciated. We'd stay in one any time we needed someplace to hang for a night while on our way from place to place. One caveat, though. The one we stayed in was brand new. It's even possible that we were the first people to stay in our room. So we can't confirm how well the upkeep and cleaning is performed at this chain overall, though in our experience it is usually dependent on the management of the individual hotel more than anything else.

Four Seasons San Francisco

Every time we've visited San Francisco we've stayed with good friends in the city. For a change of pace we decided this time to stay downtown, and also to splurge a bit (actually a lot). This visit marks the first time I believe that we've ever stayed in a Four Seasons, mainly because they're damned expensive. On the other hand, after staying there it's pretty obvious what you're paying for. The hotel is, as advertised, right downtown about two blocks from Moscone Center.

The hotel interior is frankly, just stunning. The lighting, the décor, the art, it's all understated and quiet and just drips money. There are original and for the most part attractive artworks everywhere you look. The overall color scheme is copper and cream, dark stained wood and marble.

The rooms are just about as attractive as the rest of the hotel with cream and yellow walls and grey blue carpeting, Our room was large and well laid out though the long entry hallway was pretty much just wasted space. Our view had the bay in the distance though a little closer in was a construction site. Oh, well.

We ate lunch and dinner in the main restaurant, Seasons, which was again, as attractive as the rest of the hotel. Lunch was very good though we might have been the only two tourists in the place. Much of the rest of the clientele were people having business lunches and women who a friend of ours termed 'ladies who shop'. Breakfast was also quite good and the proportion of business people was up and ladies down. Still just a minimum of tourists.

Overall service was on a par with the best we've experienced. When we indicated that we wanted a taxi to go to another restaurant a mile away for dinner, they supplied us with the hotel limo to take us, gratis. All of our requests were met with quiet efficiency and charm. There is a spa but Mary didn't have time to check it out. I did check out the gym which was actually a health club on the lower floors of the building. It's a very extensive facility with lots of trainers running around to make you feel a little bit more overweight and old. I did my time on the treadmill and escaped back to the room quickly.

We'd be happy to go back to the Four Seasons anytime we could scrounge up a few spare shekels. Or a few hundred. It really is a wonderful property. The location is central and the hotel, as might be expected considering its cost, seems to cater largely to the business crowd.

Peninsula Hotel Hong Kong

We decided to stay at the Peninsula in Hong Kong because it was an historic property built during the fading years of the Empire and has figured prominently in the city for much of its life. The original hotel has been updated quite effectively and an additional and much newer tower has been added to the original building with magnificent views of the harbor. We didn't stay there. We stayed in the original building and we had a nice view of the YMCA.

Still, the rooms were really quite attractive. White walls and incredibly high ceilings. You could easily play basketball in these rooms. The décor is tasteful and understated. The bathroom was grand, with white marble everywhere.

The hotel public spaces are very appealing. The main lobby is largely taken up by the lobby restaurant, called interestingly enough - The Lobby. Lots of marble floors set off lots of columns which support a very extensive amount of mouldings and plaster or marble fittings.

There is pretty much a whole shopping mall built into the hotel, with three floors of the most expensive retailers one can imagine. Prada, Bulgari and lots of stores for which I recognize the name but am not that familiar with their products, nor to be honest do I ever want to be all that familiar with them. Not my kind of thing, my sartorial tastes pretty much run to Eddie Bauer and.......Eddie Bauer Online. I'm a pretty simple guy though Mary seems to think this statement means something else, 'cause she giggles every time I say it. Weird.

Besides The Lobby there are a plethora of other restaurants and a couple of bars. The main bar is also a smoking and cigar bar. Don't bother going unless your tolerance for tobacco is much, much higher than mine. It still seems a little unusual to me to smell tobacco smoke inside a building. We ate a couple of breakfasts and a lunch at The Veranda which had a very, very nice buffet breakfast and an unusual set lunch with a buffet salad and hors d'oeuvres bar as well as a dessert buffet, along with a plated entrée. Different, and the buffet element was very nice. Even Mary agreed and she doesn't much like buffets.

We also had dim sum one day for lunch in the hotel's Spring Moon restaurant and it was excellent, though expensive. Restaurants we didn't try out included Imasa (Japanese), Gaddi's (Italian), Felix (trendy - it's on top of the tower with views of the harbor. Every description we saw started with person who designed the space and gave no indication on what type of food was served - a bad sign). Finally and most intriguingly, there was Chesa, which offered Swiss cuisine. Not sure why one would pick a Swiss restaurant for a Hong Kong hotel, but it amused us no end. If we had had a little more time I think we probably would have tried it just to say we ate in a Swiss restaurant in Hong Kong.

Service at the Peninsula, as we expected, was superb and unobtrusive. We took an inexpensive local taxi back to the airport. On our arrival and then again when we transferred from the Disney hotel to the Peninsula we also used local taxis, none of which had a trunk big enough for our luggage. And we're not carrying all that much, just one suitcase each plus our carry-ons. So every time we took a taxi they had to bungie cord the trunk closed. Mary didn't notice this when we took the first taxi because it was dark and she was tired. She did notice the second time when she glanced out the rear window while we were tooling down the highway and clutched my arm and announced in a panicked whisper that the trunk had sprung open. I explained that the luggage was secure or mostly so and she was partially relieved. So it came as much of a laugh when we observed another party being helped into one of the signature Rolls Royce limos owned by the Peninsula, to find out that the trunk of the Rolls was very little larger than those of the taxis and had to be bungied closed also.

We did take advantage of a hotel-arranged free cruise of the harbor at twilight. They take you too and from the ferry building on an open vintage double decker bus. Most cool. And there was champagne. Also cool.

We really enjoyed our stay at the Peninsula, but to be honest the jury's still out on whether or not we'd stay there again. It can be breathtakingly expensive if you can't find a deal. The location is wonderful for the harbor view of Kowloon -- well, it is if you get a harbor view room. Our room could have been in any large city in the world for the most part. It's not terribly easy to get to many of the places tourists want to go from the Peninsula, though the ferry building is only a block away. So that's easy. We had no complaints about the hotel whatsoever; I just think we might have liked another location better. On the other hand the historical value of the hotel itself is pretty amazing. We'll be popping back through Hong Kong later during the trip and we're scheduled to spend the night in the Intercontinental Hotel, which is right on the harbor and a block from the Peninsula. We'll see how we like that.

We loved Cathay. I considered burning the house in Colorado to the ground, taking the insurance money, and moving to somewhere in Asia so we can use Cathay as our airline of choice all the time. If Cathay ever offers the option, like cruise ships, of living aboard full time we might do that too. Cathay, like Virgin Atlantic, has now joined our pantheon of airlines that most closely approximate what it was like to fly during the Golden Age of air travel. At least in our fevered imaginations, as both of us were a mite young to experience it. Really.

We checked in at JFK a couple of hours before our flight was due to depart, mainly because I'm one of those people who hates to be late and rush and get all flustered and sweaty and stuff. Insofar as schedules are concerned, Mary is a lot more laissez faire than I. Arriving at the gate with two minutes till boarding starts doesn't faze her at all. I'd be having palpitations. Since Cathay doesn't have their own lounge in JFK, we were given passes with directions to the British Airlines Terraces lounge in the terminal. Free beer and finger sandwiches!

As usual, Mary requested that I show some decorum and not try to guzzle all the beer myself. It was a challenge but I was able to resist the impulse. I did however, with some help from my fellow passengers I'm sure, manage to exhaust the stocks of at least one or two varieties of beer on the flight. In my defense, the flight was fifteen hours long and they do say that it's important to drink a lot and stay hydrated. I tend to ignore that part at the end where they say that alcohol isn't that good an idea. Worrywarts.

After an hour partaking the bounteous benefits of the lounge we received the message to board the aircraft and made our way to the gate, at which point we noticed that there weren't any people standing around in the gate area. Apparently they board all the Economy passengers first and then the First and Business Class passengers. I guess this is so we don't have to rub shoulders with unwashed or something. And to top it off, there was a separate boarding jetway for us too. I'm thinking - Hey, I can get used to this!

The new First Class suites on Cathay are pretty phenomenal. Here are some pictures from Cathay's site. I don't think we ever thought we'd be able to sit in one of these, and without the oneworld Alliance Round the World tickets, I'm pretty sure we'd never be able to. A normal single First Class fare for the JFK-HKG flight alone normally costs more than the total for the pair of Round the World tickets we were using.

So we boarded and seated ourselves, two of only six first class passengers on the flight. A glass of champagne (it settles the stomach and aids digestions I've been told) before takeoff, and we were off almost before we had settled in. The AVOD (Airborne Video On Demand) came with Bose noise-reduction headphones and as complete a list of movies and TV shows as one could hope for. Over the course of the flight I watched the Bourne Ultimatum (all right), Shoot 'Em Up (ludicrous), Kill Bill Volume I (beyond ludicrous, actually maybe beyond our reality).

Meals on board were extensive, exquisite, and nearly endless. Mary and I dined together since there's seating in the suite for another person and the dinner tray table isn't quite as small as a deck of cards like it is elsewhere. I decided on the more conventional western style dinner while Mary went with the Asian one. After dinner we both had the seats converted into beds and went to sleep, a couple of hours for me and somewhat more for Mary. We decided when we boarded not to get too much sleep so that we could get into the groove in Hong Kong. It's weird. On short flights of a few hours or so I can fall asleep sitting up as soon as I board and wake up just as we're landing. On longer overwater flights I have the hardest time sleeping. It works out all right as we usually end up needing to go to sleep soon after we arrive somewhere overseas, in order to get back in sync with whatever the local time is, but sometimes it is a bit of a bother, as our English cousins would say.

Around the middle of the night I decided to have some fried dumplings and a beer. They were excellent. Then an hour and a half before we landed they tried to press a "light" dinner on us. Too full, I protested. But the protests, which probably would have been more effective if I wasn't trying to use my telepathic powers, were ignored. Dinner was very good, yet again. Damn those Cathay people!

Overall the service was pretty unbelievable though some of that is to be expected considering that there were two flight attendants for six first class passengers. Still, I can't help but remark on how the service wasn't just better - it was orders of magnitude better than what we've experienced on American carriers on overseas flights. That makes our plans to use Frequent Flyer redemptions on American Airline's foreign partners seem like a really good decision.

We also had a short Cathay flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok that we enjoyed almost as much as the long haul flight. We have a couple of additional long haul flights on Cathay coming up, so we'll see if they can keep their Number One ranking.

While in Hawaii we stayed in two resorts. The Princeville Hotel was our primary choice and we added the Grand Hyatt Kaua'i later during the trip planning.

The Princeville has been probably the dominant higher end hotel on Kaua'i until fairly recently. Originally built in 1985, according to a conversation I overheard at the pool one day, the hotel is in fairly good shape for it's age. The interior public spaces are well kept while the grounds and the exteriors are showing their little wear. The overall décor is Italianate for some reason which pretty much escapes me. The lobby and main floor public areas are mainly marble and off-white painted wood with lots of gold leaf. It's not unpleasant but it's certainly not what we think of when we think the Tropics. Maybe they were going for something different than what everyone else was doing. Or maybe the designer was deranged.

The décor largely extends into the guest rooms. The walls and floors in the rooms are in good shape though the furniture is showing a fair amount of wear. The bathrooms were done up in dark marble, I'm guessing because it was the Eighties and maybe there was a world wide glut of dark green Italian marble. One of the more unusual touches is that there is a window or screen in the wall over the tub looking into the main room. The opacity of the screen can be controlled by a wall switch. Why one would want to set it to clear escapes me, I'm pretty sure Mary really doesn't want to watch my morning ablutions - that's why we have doors on the bathrooms at home. Being on vacation doesn't seem to encourage any desire to change this stance.

The bed is one item of furniture that obviously has been replaced relatively recently and it was quite good. Other accoutrements in the room were a CRT television and a minibar with coffee maker and quite good coffee packets. We were upgraded to an ocean view room, primarily we think because it was off-season and the resort wasn't very crowded. Otherwise we probably would have gotten one of the ubiquitous 'Garden View' rooms that usually come with a free stay on Starwood points. As one might expect, the ocean view was very nice and we enjoyed it at all times of the day.

The on-site restaurants were pretty unremarkable though prices were stratospheric. This seemed to be a common theme in Kaua'i hotels. It's a little worse for the Princeville since most off-site eating establishments required a somewhat substantial drive, often on dark roads including one or more one lane bridges. So I imagine a lot of people probably eat many of their meals at the resort. We did have a few meals there and the food was good in some cases, verging on excellent, so although prices are high you do get some value for it. We especially liked the sushi served in the main bar in the evenings and on a couple of days where we ate substantial lunches we settled for a sushi sampler and in my case a couple of beers for the evening repast.

Service in all respects was very good and we had no complaints about that aspect whatsoever.

The second resort we stayed at was the Grand Hyatt on the south end of Kaua'i. This is a very large facility, indeed much larger than we first suspected. I think in the case of this hotel we didn't do much research other than looking for recommendations and so the extent of the offerings caught us a little by surprise.

We did get a 'Garden View' room this time since we were only staying two days and the Hyatt seemed a little busier. The room was also a bit smaller than the one in the Princeville but quite comfortable. All furnishings and the room itself was in quite good condition. Interestingly enough the television here was also a CRT which surprised us considering how up to date everything else in the hotel seemed. The bathroom was not terribly big but then it also didn't have any windows for others to observe through so it was pretty much a wash there. Get it- wash? We'll be here through Sunday folks!

The overall décor was white painted walls and lots of mahogany stained wood. The overall effect was quite pleasing and did evoke the tropics. The lobby is open air and it surrounds a central courtyard which is planted with many of the plant species for which the islands are known. There are also a number of parrots and macaws on perches in the courtyard. There are extensive shopping venues in the hotel and enough restaurants to satisfy everyone's needs.

The pool is really quite spectacular and is clearly designed for children. Very rarely does it get much deeper than 3-4 feet and it winds and wends its way through a very large section of the grounds. There are all sorts of semi-isolated grottos and pockets where one can settle and catch some rays, read a book, and drink a few beers. I wanted to do all three of these things but settled for the last two as the sun played hide and seek during the two days we were at the Hyatt. The rest of the grounds are attractively landscaped and very well maintained. Like the Princeville, the Hyatt is located adjacent to a golf course. Unlike the Princeville the Hyatt's course also includes a couple of pretty interesting restaurants in the club house. We were a little pressed for time so we didn't get a chance to try them.

Two other fairly strange similarities existed between the two hotels. Both had a main bar called the Library. Maybe it's an island thing. And both hotels also had a high end Italian restaurant. Why Italian? I don't know. It certainly is not what I think of when I'm in the tropics and I want a good meal.

After careful consideration we both concluded that the Hyatt was by far the better of the two properties. The Princeville is looking and feeling a little worn around the edges. The breadth of the Hyatt's offerings, both in dining and entertainment (if one considers lying in the sun and drinking cold frosty beers entertaining, and I certainly do) are considerably better, while the Princeville definitely wins on the scenery side of the equation. It's possible that the overall dominance of the Hyatt will decline in the near future as there are apparently plans to convert the Princeville to a St. Regis property and one would assume that this would includes extensive renovations.