Before getting in to the detail of our return flight here’s a recap on where we stayed as I remember a couple of you were interested in our itinerary. I'll also give a bit of a report on our overall trip, feel free to scroll right down if you're only interested in the flight bit
3 nights Kuala Lumpur - Mandarin Oriental
3 nights Cameron Highlands - Cameron Highlands Resort
6 nights Penang - Shangri La Rasa Sayang
3 nights in Singapore - Mandarin Oriental
As mentioned in my outbound TR I’d booked this trip through Amex PTS taking advantage of their Emirates “2 for 1” business class offer. The other reason for wanting to book through PTS was to receive FHR benefits at the hotels we stayed in, this trip being our first opportunity to test out the whole FHR thing. Incidentally Shangri La’s Rasa Sayang is not part of FHR so just a regular booking albeit still via PTS. I had my doubts thinking perhaps the FHR offering may be gimmicky but knew from fellow V-Flyers that it usually comes up trumps so was quietly optimistic.
Having now completed the holiday I can safely confirm that the FHR benefits all exceeded our expectations. We received room upgrades at both MO’s, in particular the room upgrade at the Singapore MO was to an ‘Ocean Grand’ which was fabulous! Other FHR benefits we received included bottles of Perrier Jouet bubbly on ice, a lovely bottle of Cotes du Rhone (we brought it back to UK and enjoyed it last night!), chocolate platters, fresh fruit, complimentary laundry in KL (worth a bomb given we paid for it in Singapore!), complimentary ‘high tea’ (in KL), complimentary jungle trek (in CH) and early check-in and late 6pm check-outs everywhere except Rasa. Also wireless internet was complimentary on the FHR rate and I have to say worked faultlessly throughout both MO's, both in room, lifts, corridors and poolside. The overarching benefit though was three nights for the price of two at both MO’s. This alone represented a vast saving, especially considering the price of a Club room at the Singapore MO. Personalised letters on posh paper in sealed envelopes were also passed to us on arrival at the KL and Singapore MO’s which was a nice touch as was a personal concierge welcome whereby you are greeted from the car and escorted straight to your room.
Summing up our hotel experiences:
MO KL: Personally my favourite of the lot. Not the newest most glitzy hotel but all round offered impeccable and faultless service.
Cameron Highlands Resort: A place to cool off, high up in the mountains where air-con is virtually unheard of! Beautiful scenery, visits to tea plantations, next to no humidity and lots of healthy walking & jungle trekking! Unlike the other hotels though there was no complimentary cocktail hour here and the drinks were expensive....paying around £10 for a small glass of wine really is over the top IMHO! The Cameron Highlands has a distinctly colonial feel, indeed in parts of it you feel like you’re in the UK countryside!
Rasa Sayang Resort Penang: Spot on in terms of luxury & overall product offered. Right on the beach, although we didn’t use it as the pool area was gorgeous. We’d booked ‘Rasa Wing’ which gives you access to the Rasa Lounge for afternoon high tea and evening ‘Manager’s Cocktails”, use of the more intimate Rasa Pool and complimentary poolside soft drinks all day long. We loved our stay here, in particular our ground floor room with its own private tropical garden that opened up directly into the lush grounds, just a stone’s throw from the pool! Meant we could come and go via our patio doors direct to the pool area without going through the hotel corridors.
MO Singapore: Put simply, fantastic. Sheer luxury, & faultless service. As I said just now though the MO in KL was for me the winner of the two....very hard to describe why, I think perhaps just a tad less formal yet still oozing wonderfulness.
Just a quick word on 'Club offerings' in hotels....something I feel compelled to raise as I'd be interested in the views of others. You’ll know what I’m talking about, indeed there’s an array of terms across the world’s hotels from ’executive floor’ to ’club lounge’ to ’manager’s cocktails’! It took this holiday though to make us realise quite how amusing this whole ‘Club’ concept can be, especially when it comes to people watching and making ‘etiquette comparisons’ of Club floor offerings across different establishments.....
For us the MO in KL got the Club thing spot on. At MO they call it the “Oriental Club” and the KL club lounge was just enormous, an entire half floor of the hotel. Tonnes of space and never an issue with waiting for a table. Unlike the Club lounge in at the Singapore MO, where you are formally seated, at KL the whole ambience was more relaxed, ie. pitch up & sit anywhere you fancy. Breakfast was served here and offered the full works, chefs out the front, egg stations...the lot.
Some club lounges, like the ones at Rasa Sayang & Singapore offered a reduced breakfast service, ie. if you wanted the full choice you were best off going to the main hotel buffet.
At the Rasa Sayang their “Rasa Lounge” was run very differently to both MO lounges. High tea was between 3pm & 4pm, you were seated formally where cakes and dainty sandwiches were delivered on a cake stand, each scone & sandwich carefully counted....no possibility of ‘help yourself’ here!
Manager’s cocktails at the Rasa was a single hour, rather inconveniently (for us!) timed between 6 & 7pm. We inadvertently found ourselves falling in to the trap at the Rasa Sayang of planning our entire days around the high tea and evening cocktails offerings! For instance we wouldn't eat too much at lunch so we have space in our tummies for afternoon high tea. In the evening we'd get ready in evening attire much earlier than we otherwise would have done, all because we wanted our freebie G&T’s at 6pm!
Of course the issue then was what to do come 7pm given that we were dressed for the evening but not particularly wanting to eat that early! Generally we’d take ourselves off to another bar and have yet another (paid for!) G&T! Incidentally there was quite a strict dress code at the Rasa Lounge, so much so that we saw a blanket being taken over to a young Japanese couple which initially we thought was for his girlfriend/wife (as it was chilly in the air-con)....but oh no, they unfolded the blanket and placed it over his legs! It must have been the poor chap’s first evening visit to the lounge and he was in shorts....tut, tut! I felt what the staff did was over the top and actually drew more attention to the fact that he was in shorts than if they’d simply done nothing. Shorts and flip flops were however allowed for the afternoon high tea.
We preferred the informality of the MO KL lounge where, for example, tea and cakes were available all day long, just pop in and help yourself. The evening cocktail receptions were two hours and that made a huge difference. Instead of being dressed and ready for the entire evening as early as 6, more often than not we called by the MO lounges much later, around 7.30pm which fitted nicely with evening schedules!
One important thing to mention (only as it crops up time & time again on TR’s here on VF) is being addressed by name. They really do get this so ‘right’ in the Far East
In every hotel we stayed in we were greeted at every opportunity by name and, as others here say, doesn’t it just make a HUGE difference. Moreover, us being two chaps, they addressed both of us....not just myself whose name the hotels were booked in but typically “Good morning Mr Watson & Mr Munn, did you sleep well, how is your room...etc..etc”. On one occasion, at the MO Singapore, we decided to go the main breakfast area downstairs as we found the Club Lounge a bit stilted at breakfast time. I’ve never seen such a beautifully, yet vast, breakfast offering...there must have been seating for a couple of hundred guests. We were flabbergasted though, given that this was our one and only visit as when we departed fter a great breakfast one of the chefs called out after us, “goodbye Mr Watson & Mr Munn, hope to see you again”. Goodness knows how that worked, perhaps the radio ear pieces that every staff member had were something to do with it!? Needless to say if hotels can get it right to that extent then airlines have no excuse when welcoming regulars back on board, especially when they all have to do is read the name off the boarding pass!Also worthy of a quick mention is whether or not we ever experienced any uneasiness or, dare I say it ,‘hassle’ what with being a same sex couple holidaying in a Muslim country. The answer is categorically no, we were warmly welcomed everywhere including being personally shown to our bedrooms complete with super-king or four-poster beds. The reason I felt this worth a mention is that Malaysia is pretty strict when it comes to the whole gay thing, indeed strictly speaking it’s illegal to be gay there and some of what you read in the Malaysian press is unnerving to say the least. Hence we set out on the trip just a tad apprehensive only to have our worries quashed the moment we arrived at the first hotel. We also saw quite a few other same sex couples holidaying at the same hotels, so all in all absolutely no issue. Perhaps I am wrong to have even worried that there may have been an issue somewhere along the way. Maybe the recent issue of the UK B&B owners who refused to accommodate a male couple had got to me! In the Cameron Highlands we were even provided with romantic gestures like this as part of evening ‘turn down’:
How many of you have witnessed hotel guests using the evening cocktail and canapé period as an opportunity to eat and drink as much as you can, in fact I’d go as far as to say “sit down for dinner” there? This is exactly what we witnessed at the MO in Singapore. The couple in question (elderly and very loud) then proceeded to complain that they needed proper full size cutlery to cut their chicken satays & curry puffs and made it clear they were not impressed at the choice of dinner choices or the fact that it was “buffet”! I honestly think they were under the impression they were on a half board arrangement and had no idea that “drinks and canapés” were no more than a pre-dinner complimentary “Club” offering!
Just before going on to our return Emirates flights a quick mention of our Malaysia Airlines Penang – Singapore sector which we’d booked online many months earlier. We’d opted for business class for around £80 each and we ended up being the only passengers in the entire business class cabin!
The day before our return Emirates called us at the hotel to confirm our CDC pick up for the following morning. A nice touch and eliminated any concern that the driver may not show up! We were collected in a Mercedes E Class at 06.40, three hours prior to our flight. On arrival at departures kerbside we were greeted (by name again!) by an Emirates representative along with a porter who handled our three large cases. We were escorted the few yards to Business Class check-in where luggage was tagged “Quick Transfer DXB” along with “Priority Business”. We hadn’t actually touched our luggage since the hotel room and wouldn’t again until Gatwick!
Singapore Changi is a fantastic airport but what we encountered at departures Immigration was an absolute joke. When we approached the immigration area we noticed passengers coming back, against the flow, to the departures hall, all of them with faces of thunder. When each of us were served we understood the problem....they were sending back anyone who had a middle name in their passport, but not on their boarding pass. We were both seething as we know full well that middle names do not have to be entered on airline tickets or boarding passes! To cut a long story short we returned to check-in, had the agent hand write on our middle names, then we returned to Immigration. The agent checked carefully that the hand written middle name was evident and let us though....what the heck was all that about!
The Emirates lounge was quiet when we arrived and we grabbed some juice & settled down in a corner with laptop & iPad. The wireless was a bit up & down and when we raised this with the receptionist she re-booted the router which seemed to help. We were really looking forward to our everlasting day since, like flying west from London to LAX or SFO, this flight from Singapore to London would be daylight all the way. Even better though, on each sector we’d be getting a full five course lunch! Thus in the lounge we refrained from helping ourselves to the Veuve given the extra long, and very ‘wet’ day ahead!
The aircraft operating our flight was due in from Brisbane at 8am and it arrived a few minutes early. You’ll know from my outbound TR that I’m a bit of an anorak so it’ll come as no surprise that I already knew that this sector would be on A6-EBO, a Boeing 777-300ER delivered to Emirates in May 2006 and, shock horror, had ‘deeply reclining’ seats in J as opposed to lie flat! I’d known since the day before that it had departed DXB on time bound for Brisbane via Singapore, so no delays expected for our initial homeward sector.
Business class passengers were called to the gate after the rest of the aircraft had been boarded, so no scrum. We were greeted by name at the door and taken to our seats. We had 9J&K again, loads of room – three windows worth! Champagne on this sector was Moet (it seems Emirates stock Bollinger in J for only London bound/originating flights).
The warm canapés accompanying the pre-lunch service were delicious. The lunch menu was to die for, we both opted for Arabic meze for appetiser then I had steamed snapper and Steve the seafood medley. Both dishes were beautifully presented and the Sauvignon Blanc was extremely good, apologies I forgot to keep a menu to remind myself what the wine choices were.
Unlike on the A380 going out, we were both served together and both meals arrived at the same time.
Throughout the flight we were always served by the same cheery (Australian) flight attendant and, again, always addressed by name...not “any more wine” but “Mr Watson, would you like a another Sauvignon Blanc”?
I like the way Emirates do the dessert and cheese round, with a trolley beautifully set up with an array of mouth watering desserts and cheeses, all cut to order by hand in front of you. Having said that I can’t for the life of me remember what I had for pudding!
The IFE on this sector was ICE (not ICE digital widescreen) and offered around a hundred movies and countless audio channels – all on demand. I watched the King’s Speech for the first time on this sector, what a brilliant & very moving film.
We were delayed landing at Dubai and held circling for around 40 minutes. Just before landing all the information pertinent to connecting flights and gate numbers were displayed on the IFE so we knew exactly what gate our connecting flight to Gatwick would be departing from.
We were keen to have time to see whether or not the Emirates business class lounge at DXB was any better by day than it had been at 3am on the outbound. We were among the first off at DXB. Straight through to transfer pax security then back up to the terminal which was heaving.
The lounge was unfortunately no better than two weeks earlier, there must have been around a thousand people milling about and, as the lounge is an open mezzanine type affair, the sheer din from the hectic terminal below made it somewhere you really didn’t want to be. The food area reminded me of queuing for school dinners...take a tray and wind your way along a lengthy queue passing congealed trays of lasagne & dried up turkey sausages! I appreciate EK’s operation at DXB is vast with hundreds upon hundreds of premium class passengers travelling at any one time but, honestly, this business lounge is truly grim.
Our next flight was an hour off at 14:30 so we decided not to remain in the lounge and headed straight for the gate which turned out to be a coaching gate. First and Business Class pax were asked to remain seated whilst everyone else who arrived at the gate room was sent down to awaiting coaches. We eventually got on our coach and taken to our aircraft, A6-EBQ, a five year old 777-300ER with lie-flats & ICE digital widescreen in J
We departed on time and, for all intensive purposes, repeated our five course lunch experience albeit from a different menu. Again the meals were beautifully presented and the wine choice was good.
I almost forgot to say that, on all four Emirates flights on this trip, using your own mobile phone in-flight was permitted. After take-off a special announcement concerning this was made but we never saw anyone using a mobile on any of the flights. I dread to think what the costs are for this!?
So our everlasting day was nearing an end as we approached Gatwick bang on schedule at 18:15 local time. We’d been up since the equivalent of 22:00 UK time the night before and enjoyed superb Emirates hospitality on both flights...but now all we wanted to do was get home! A smooth approach and landing was had, although a child a few rows behind was clearly experiencing ear pain poor thing, hence the sound affects on this clip of our landing at Gatwick!
For once our LGW arrival experience was fantastic (we’re used to arriving on EZY at 1am!) and our bags were off within minutes. Through to arrivals where a group of EK limo drivers were all waiting. We were home forty-five minutes after touching down!
Once again apologies for the length of this TR....I ain’t half a rambler...but that’s me!
Hope you all enjoyed the read,
James (with input from Steve!)
Last edited by Vegascrazy on 08 Mar 2011, 18:01, edited 1 time in total.
