When we got off the plane after originally arriving in Beijing, Teresa and I were nearly dumbstruck at the first class life: they had chairs that fully reclined into beds! As we passed them we both vowed that sometime, some day when were older we would engage in such frivolous activity. Well, today we grew up.
Check out my personal salt and pepper shakers!
Yep: first class chairs!
Sidebar: the Beijing airport. I love mistakes.
On our first day in Beijing we had planned and booked our Cambodian itinerary. We booked flights from Beijing to Siam Reap, Siam Reap to Phnom Penh and Phnom Penh to Bangkok. The flights fit together nicely and gave us just enough rushed time in each place. There was one trick: our first flight was to leave Bangkok late Friday morning but we were currently scheduled to arrive in Bangkok on Friday afternoon. Yes, we booked an entire country's itinerary and a detailed succession of flights in the expectation/hope/assumption that we would be able to change our flights back to Bangkok and arrive earlier. We needed to get on earlier flights to both Hong Kong and then Bangkok. We knew options existed, we just didn't know if there were seats. Quite the risk.
We headed to the airport on Thursday evening with tickets for Friday evening and hopes of getting on the flight that evening. Teresa did a lot coaxing and and wirking through unclear reasoning an got us on. Part one: complete. We arrived in Hong Kong just after midnight and set up our stuff for another makeshift sleep on the airport floor. Why not benches or chairs you ask? They were all taken!
As soon as an employee showed up just after 5:30am Teresa was there, but this time she returned with bad news: flight was 400% full. We needed to come back in an hour and a half to see if anyone didn't show up. There were no other flights through this airline that would get us to Bangkok in time to make our connection. I checked the departures board and visited all other airlines with early morning Bangkok flights. All were full (and they would have cost us more anyways). We anxiously waited. We thought it would be a good idea for me, a different face, to go to the counter and inquire again and see if we got the same response. I went and at least got us on the formal standby list. And then, after much (boatloads, really) pushing and insistence on our part, we got on the flight about an hour before takeoff. But we didn't just get a seat, we both got first-class. Whaaat?
First class is simply lovely. As soon as we sit down on the roomier chairs we have water in champagne glasses, are offered champagne, are brought English newspapers and receive plenty of stares. We weren't really dressed for the occasion as we were in our comfortable backpacking clothes. After sleeping on the airport floor we were okay with chairs that changed completely into beds. We thoroughly enjoyed our flight. Thoroughly.
The following pics were taken with great risk and caused great embarrassment ;) as they garnered even more stares from my surrounding upperclassmen.
We made it to Siam Reap without incident so our huge risk paid off! Siam Reap is in Northwestern Cambodia and is home to the famous Angkor village, namely Angkor Wat (wat, in Cambodia, refers to all kinds of places of worship) where Angkor Wat refers to a city of temples. We were on a tight schedule (we flew out the next day at 10) so we needed to motor. Unfortunately we even bypassed Dairy Queen at the Siam Reap airport.
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