Our flight left Manila at 8 PM, so we had the morning of our
final day to doodle around at the resort (I went to the spa), and then had
lunch before heading out. We were
initially told that we would leave 6 hours before our flight, but then our
departure time was set for noon. Rob
negotiated it back up to 1, so we could eat before we left (and so we wouldn’t
have to wait at the airport for 5 hours).
I guess the traffic around Manila can be quite variable, hence the early
departure. The boat ride back to
Batangas was faster and much less sporty than the ride over. It was sporty for a very brief period, but
was otherwise fine. When we arrived in
Batangas, the van was waiting for us, and we were off. We made a brief stop at a Starbucks just
outside of Manila, and we still managed to get to the airport (to the first
terminal where we stopped, which wasn’t ours) in exactly 3 hours.
The Manila airport has three terminals, two of which don’t
seem that terrible, but we were flying out of the terrible Terminal 1 (which
nearly all of the airlines go out of).
All I can say is that if you ever fly out of this terminal, I highly
recommend not flying coach. We were met
at the van by a porter who works for the hotel (there were lots of porters for
hire at the airport too, which would have swarmed us when we got out of our
van, except we already had one). You
have to go through a metal detector and bag scanner to enter the airport, so
there was a huge line snaking its way along the sidewalk outside of the
airport, in the heat. Our porter asked
us if we were coach or business class.
Turns out if you are business class, you can go to the front of the line
(phew) but you need something to prove this to actually do that. Luckily that return itinerary that we were told
we would need to enter the Philippines was still in the bottom of my bag. So we escaped the long line, and stood in a
short line and after a few minutes, we were through security. Our porter showed us to the checkin line,
which had one person in it, and he explained the rest of the process – pay exit
fee, go through immigration (or is it emigration?), then security – pointed us
in the right direction, and then we parted.
There was a short line to pay the exit fee, and slightly
longer line at passport control (which is a no wang-wang zone, by the
way). Then we got to the security
checkpoint. There is a separate line for
men and women, and the women’s line was slower.
Not because there were more women, but because they got stuck with the
kids, strollers, etc. while their husbands strolled through the shorter
line. But it was still a pretty short
wait, since the passport check throttles it.
Since Rob had his camera and our lightheads, we made it through our
respective lines at about the same time anyway.
Once through security, I perused some of the shops in the
terminal, and then we retreated to the Cathay Pacific lounge. For some reason that remains unknown to me,
Rob’s lounge invitation for Manila was for the first class lounge, while mine
was for the business class lounge; and both of our Hong Kong lounge invitations
were business class. So, when we walked
into the lounge, the attendant told us we could go to the first class lounge;
the door to that was right next to the entrance. So I didn’t get a very good look at the
business class lounge, but it looked like a room with a bunch of chairs and
coffee tables crammed into it in a very cramped configuration. The first class lounge was much more spacious
and had more comfortable chairs (or more comfortable-looking anyway, since I
didn’t actually sit in the other chairs).
The one thing that both lounges had was ample air conditioning. The terminal itself was under-cooled, and as
you walked past each of the lounge entrances, you could feel a little bubble of
cool air. The first class lounge was
actually uncomfortably cold. There was
self-serve food and beverage. We were in
the lounge for quite a while (maybe 3 hours?), so I eventually was hungry, and had
some noodle soup and a tiny crème brulee (which Rob seemed quite insistent that
I have). When it was finally time to
board, we headed to the boarding lounge, which was like a 1 minute walk from
the lounge, and it was not nearly as crowded or chaotic as I expected, based on
what we’d seen when we flew in. After a
minute or two, we boarded.
We were on an A-330 for this leg, and I had no idea what the
configuration was like (I couldn’t figure out which of the CX A-330
configurations from seatguru applied to this flight). Turns out it was what seatguru refers to as
“2-class V1 (333)”. Anyhoo, it was
similar to what you would get on a two-class short haul domestic flight on a US
airline, though the seats were maybe a tiny bit wider and cushier, though it
seemed like finding a seat whose controls actually worked properly was a bit of
a challenge. The cabin was maybe 20%
full. It was a short flight, during
which they served us dinner. I had some
beef dish with some kind of sauce and veggies, and probably potatoes. The beef (or maybe the sauce) was inedibly
salty, so after a few bites I gave up on it (hence the lack of a precise
description… I blocked it out). I read
for a little bit and before you know it, we were to Hong Kong.
We had a two and a half hour layover in Hong Kong, and we
made the hike to the Pier, even though it wasn’t terribly close to our
gate. I wandered over to the shower area
and retrieved a pager, since all of the showers were in use I guess, and Rob
found a seat in the lounge. Eventually I
had a shower and then snacked a bit, since I didn’t eat much on the
flight. The noodle bar closed just after
we arrived, which was too bad. I wasn’t
really in love with much of the food that I found to nibble on, though they had
some tasty sesame cookies. Eventually it
was time to make the trek back to our gate, and we got there to find that once
again, things were running a bit behind.
When you walk down the ramp to board, before you get to the jetway,
there is a bit of security theater, where they go through your bags and pretend
they are making the flight safer. It
was pretty efficient though.
When we boarded, we found that it would have been better to
be seated in two adjacent middle seats, rather than the middle and window that
we had. There was an equipment change
for this flight at some point after I picked seats (back then it was a 747, now
it was a 777) and since I couldn’t figure out which way the pods faced (feet
towards aisle or head towards aisle), I didn’t know which would make more
sense. So once we figured this out, Rob
asked a flight attendant if there were any two middle seats available for us,
and they re-seated us. After takeoff
they started dinner service. At this
point it was after midnight, and I was tired, but I wanted to stay up a while
longer so I wouldn’t sleep too long.
Dinner consisted of a very tasty fruit plate (which included some very
tasty fruit that I couldn’t identify), a Cobb salad (which I initially
dismissed but was actually quite good), and some Chinese dish with prawns (the
details of which I can’t remember, because it wasn’t especially awesome, but
was perfectly acceptable). For dessert
there was a peanut butter mousse cake which I was sort of meh about, even
though it sounds really tasty.
I changed into my pajamas, and after a bit more reading, I
decided to go to sleep. My goal was to
sleep for 4 hours; I think I actually slept something between 5 and 6. The seat, when reclined fully, is a little
narrow in the shoulders on one side (the side not facing the aisle). I have read this before about these seats,
but I was still able to sleep just fine.
A little too fine, since I slept longer than I meant to!
 |
| File photo of adorable kitties |
After I woke up, I watched a movie (Ides of March), and
unfortunately it was about 6 minutes too long to finish before we landed. Hmph.
But at least I understood the movie this time! After landing, we had a surprisingly short
wait at immigration and before you know it, we were back home with the little
furballs. They both greeted us at the
door, but they didn’t seem as desperate to see us as they usually are when we
get home from a trip. I eventually
discovered this was because they still had about two days worth of food left in
their bowl :)
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