I have flown on a lot of planes and mostly in coach over the years for work or for celebrity signings and after a gazillion coach flights I sometimes earn enough miles to upgrade on occasion to First Class which I usually save for those impossibly long hours to places like the Philippines or South Africa or… when I have to baby sit Gary Busey on some celebrity signing gig.
Tonight I am flying nonstop to Hong Kong with a plane change to Thailand and then a car journey to some where in Cambodia and an orphanage. Where being a peanut butter and beef jerky mule is the E ticket, earning me the title of “Princess Peanut Butter” and savior to tiny kids as peanut butter is apparently a luxury item.
I have been to Hong Kong once before, flew coach, (and trust me, not a thing you want to do unless you absolutely, positively have too) it was some thirty years ago for the shooting of “Bloodsport” starring my pals Forest Whitaker and Jean Claude Van Damme. My reason thirty years ago to go to Hong Kong aside from hanging out with friends and having a free place to crash for a few weeks in an exotic location was to find my father’s relatives.
My father had been born on Macau and silly me thought it would be easy to fly over to Hong Kong, take a jet foil to Macau, and show up, arms laden in presents and knock on some family members door — whom, I have never met — and most probably didn’t know I existed. Forest on his first day off from shooting accompanied me to Macau and together we would bang on doors in what was then a run down and broken tiny island famous for some mission abandoned by the portagese in the 1600’s and not the gambling mecca it is today in the hopes that the private investigator we had hired in Kowloon would be right — and I would find my relatives. In some childlike idea, I envisioned I would be welcomed and I would have one of those family moments only found in a Hallmark movie. Sadly, it didn’t happen as fantazied and instead, I pissed off a lot of chinese folks who didn’t take kindly to a gal holding Christmas presents in July knocking on their doors, until thankfully they recognized Forest who was then being watched all over China and on TV in John Jakes’ “North and South”.
Fast forward all these years, and here I am flying to Hong Kong and giggling like a child in a candy store. First Class is AWESOME! Now, I have flown First Class on Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines but this Cathay Pacific? Is truly the best so far.
Let’s talk about the “swag” you know all those freebies one is given when one pays mega millions to actually book a seat in First Class unlike me which cost me 125,000 in American Airlines frequent flyer miles. The swag on this airlines? Freaking’ fantastic! I am currently writing this to you clothed in the softest jammies I have ever worn and it’s free!
The “seat” which trust me, is really a bed and extremely comfortable and has so many button positions I feel like I am testing out one of those posterpedic beds advertised on TV.
The food? Well let’s just say… I am stuffed. The presentation is fantastic and the service is phenomenal and if I didn’t already have a place to live? I would be a permanent stowaway on Cathay Pacific.
There is one drawback to flying Cathay Pacific… and I know it is a tiny one. Hardly mentionable… BUT THEY DON’T OFFER WIFI!!!!!! How dare they! Don’t they know I am trying to blog my journey?! Don’t they know, you folks all three of you, are waiting with bated breath to reading every silly moment I have during this trip? Ha.
