25 March 2015
Boring stuff - part 2
Visiting all the Cathay Pacific lounges in Hong Kong airport
What to do if you have 6 hours to kill in Hong Kong airport?
Obviously, go to every lounge and eat a little in each.
I repeatedly warned that this would be very boring.
In addition to visiting and photographing every single lounge I can get into in the huge airport, I walked to every corner.
I am already very very familiar with the airport, and nothing except the new Qantas lounge has changed since my last visit.
Just walking from one end to the other and up each wing or whatever they want to call it takes many hours.
Intersperse that with a lounge visit, some food, a shower, and repeat, and its nearly time to board my flight.
So following some boring redundant text, heres some boring redundant photos - all part of the time killing exercise.
This is the Cabin. It is a business class only lounge (No First). It is the furthest from customs.
I had a hot chocolate. I really wanted a coffee, but I have some sort of delusional idea I might be able to sleep on the overnight flight if I skip caffeine.
First meal, some nice vegetables with chilli sauce, real vegetables (not pickled, Korean style), this was in another lounge, called the Bridge.
View of the Bridge, it is the newest lounge, at the end of the main corridor where it splits into a big V.
Now I have moved into the cabin, lounge number 3, and taken this photo to pretend I wanted to take photos of planes. I feel like an idiot taking lounge pictures.
Second meal, more vegetables, but this time with some chicken breast, and more chilli sauce, delicious.
View of the cabin.
Another view of the cabin, and its strange claustrophobic work stations. You can setup a laptop in these things, its very strange, but also quite cool all at once.
Now this is the wing, lounge number 4, Cathays main first class lounge. The others have small first class areas which are just seats in a quiet area. The wing however has the silver service a la carte restaurant, called the haven.
It also has rooms you can sleep in, and of course showers, I had shower number 1 here.
Being a first class only lounge, its very quiet and abandoned.
Inside the haven restaurant, I opted for buffet rather than a la carte, so i could just have more vegetables, oh and a little sausage...and some chocolates...
Blurred view of the restaurant. People in here think they are special, they frown upon photos, they also get angry if idiots are using whatsapp or similar and their phone whistles every 3 seconds, I didnt do this of course, but someone did, and got a telling off.
Heres my chocolates, and mousse.
And then to my surprise, the new Qantas first class lounge is actually great. Possibly the best lounge in the airport, better than the wing.
However their wifi is terribly overloaded. Cathays was fantastic in all their lounges. Qantas can never get wifi right for a decade now.
In all seriousness, there are influential business people all around me right now pissed off at the lack of decent wifi.
They need better access points with more channels, just getting it to authenticate takes ages, the same happens in Australian lounges.
My partially eaten 4th (I think) small meal. Pork this time, and great vegetables. I like vegetables.
They have 3 eating areas, a la carte, buffet, bar menu. I had buffet. The special tonight was some huge thing with whole salmon on it in the middle of a big round table.
So to kill a bit more time, shower number 2, in the qantas first lounge.
And theres my plane...no not the Qantas A380, the smaller Qantas A330 behind it. Now on to Melbourne.
The text in these sections is probably nonsensical, as I am doing it fast and not caring and eating and drinking all at once on a laptop going flat.