San Francisco, Hong Kong & Singapore
The real travel day is finally here! Dad wanted to get to SFO fairly early for our flights so that he could play in both the Singapore and United International First Class Lounges. This meant I was up at 8:30am in time to take a shower, have breakfast and still make the 9:30am airport shuttle. Amazingly the four of us were right on time.
Upon arrival at SFO we hauled our bags to the Singapore check in. Mom and Dad were taking a rollaboard sized for me that contained warmer clothes for Hong Kong. While my baggage allowance on United is huge, the sea-plane to our hotel once arriving in the Maldives only allows 25kg per person. You can bring more for an exorbitant fee but since dad offered to take a bag for me, I took him up on it.
The Singapore FC check-in process was amazing. There was once person at the counter being helped for the premium classes, so the guy from the excess baggage counter came to greet me by introducing himself, his name was Brian. He invited me to his counter for assistance. Not surprisingly I managed to find myself ahead of the group, so I told Brian just my parents were traveling with him today and that they would be there shortly. Ben and I left off bags with them and proceeded to United to check-in for our flights. Our experience was not nearly as friendly or fast. We were the only people in our line. After waiting for 10 minutes or so a guy approached us and asked if he could go ahead because his flight left in an hour. We weren’t in a hurry so we let him. We eventually made it to a counter where our check-in experience was relatively quick. Ben and I then went back to find my parents. We then proceeded to take pictures with this awesome model A380 for far too long. All four of us are flying back on one together at the end of our trip.
After passing through security the four of us made our way to the Singapore Lounge. It was surprisingly underwhelming. I recognize it’s an international carrier’s lounge but I expected more for exactly that reason. I suppose in contrast to the United Club at SFO, it was decent but it definitely paled in comparison to the United International First Class Lounge. I’ve only flown internationally on United one time in my life (to Australia when I was 12ish) and the current UIFCL was not built yet. It was quite a nice space. It’s WAY quieter than the United Club, the internet is 100 times faster and the food selection is 10 times better. It also had this sign which made me laugh and ponder who necessitated the creation of the sign and what were they eating?
Our flight to Hong Kong from boarding to exiting the plane was 15 hours. In the 15 hours I managed to significantly decrease my carryon luggage weight by reading a solid stack of magazines. I also watched two movies, Searching for Sugar man and Taken 2, ate more than I needed, slept for sevenish hours and decided that Ed Sheeran is the next CD I am going to buy. During my magazine reading I enjoyed listening to the random collection of CDs on the plane’s media unit. All in, the main advantages to First vs Business in my opinion is access to the lounge in the airport, constant bathroom availability (I never had to wait to use it and I went at least five times) and an additional few inches in length that matter only if you are 6’ 5”+. Ben could completely stretch out in the FC seat, albeit barely, as seen below, which he can’t in business class.
We had an hour plus layover in Hong Kong before continuing on to Singapore. We went to the lounge, had some snacks and drinks, checked email, watched some CNN and proceeded to the gate.
I have nothing to share about the four hour flight from Hong Kong to Singapore as I slept the entire time. Upon arrival at Changi Airport we made our way to the transit hotel. They were turning people away for being at capacity, so I was glad that we had planned for a snooze during this seven hour lay-over ahead of time. Even though I haven’t done much for the proceeding 24 hours I’m tired. Conveniently it is 1:15am, so after some sleep in a real bed, my clock should be somewhat adjusted.
Until more flying tomorrow,
Katy
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