The United lounges at NRT and HKG are regularly cited as the best United lounges in their network, which is perhaps more a testament to the fact that US lounges are pretty crappy. But on my layover at NRT between my two Singapore Suites flights, I decided to stop by the United Global First lounge…
Instead of answering reader questions, I’m going to pose some questions to readers. One of my habits upon entering any airport lounge is to find a place to dump my stuff and then traipse off to take photos for lounge reviews. I often leave my laptop, passport, boarding passes, and bags out in the open,…
My flight was departing from the B gates, which was a decently long walk from the Private Room and other T3 lounges. At Changi Airport, security screening takes place at the gate. In theory, this should mean that security shouldn’t take as much time, but the cluster of gates for my flight had a number…
I flew business class on this segment not because I applied a systemwide upgrade, but because I got an elusive operational upgrade. Economy was heavily oversold (and extremely light on the flight from DFW to PVG such that I had an entire row of seats to myself in coach), and a ton of people got…
Before my flight to Dallas, I used the Cathay Pacific Lounge at PVG. The lounge entrance is right next to the First Class No. 69 lounge that I’ve reviewed before (the numbers refer to the gates that they’re closest to; not sure what the first class refers since that lounge isn’t limited to first class…
Because I had booked my flights as a roundtrip in/out of Shanghai, I had to get back to Shanghai for my departure (I had initially booked this trip using a US Airways business class award to North Asia with a stops in both Beijing and Shanghai, but ended up canceling the award and booking a…
The hostel that we stayed at also organized trips to the Great Wall, including a trip to hike from Jinshanling to Simatai. I highly recommend this section of the wall, as I had heard horror stories of the wall being ridiculously crowded, but this section wasn’t crowded at all, and we felt like the only…
The Beijing Downtown Backpacker Hostel is a funky hostel located smack dab in the middle of Nanluoguxiang aka where all Chinese teenagers seem to hang out and consume sugary beverages. It’s a cool area if you get off the main street, as the hutongs have lots of cool alleyways to explore. We booked a private…
Given that I had a pretty good experience taking the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, we decided to take the overnight train from Shanghai to Beijing. In general, I highly recommend the Seat61.com site for information on train travel. We booked seats in a 4-berth soft sleeper car. All together, our tickets were about…
I’m taking a week-long pause in my Southeast Asia 2014 trip report to bring you a week of posts about a trip to China that I took in July 2014. During this trip, I went to Shanghai and Beijing with a friend: Shanghai to eat; Beijing mostly to see the Great Wall of China. In Shanghai, we…
