April 2009 Archives

I'm in Kuala Lumpur right now, relaxing and trying to regroup. This is what I'm trying to figure out right now.

There are two hotels in the KL Sentral, a Hilton and a Le Meridian. The Hilton has a boring lobby and restaurants but awesome rooms with an open bathroom and wood floors. I stayed here last year and blogged it. The Le Meridian has boring smaller rooms, but the lobby and bar is pretty nice, they have a cigar lounge and for US$40, you can purchase access to a lounge that includes free Wi-Fi, free beer, food and beverages and a nice view. The interesting thing is that the Hilton is more expensive for just a room, but if you get a room at the Le Meridian and you purchase lounge access, it's the same price as the Hilton, sans the benefit of the club floor.

Since the two hotels share the same building, they both share the pool and access to KL Sentral, what's the verdict? Here it is: If you're with someone and plan to spend a lot of time in the room, stay at the Hilton. The rooms are bigger and much nicer with flat screen TV, open bathrooms and big wide beds. If you're looking for a nice place to crash and you're not going to spend that much time in the room, stay at the Le Meridian. If you don't buy club level access, it's cheaper and if you do, you can make up the price of the club level add on by drinking lots of beer, having brekkie and happy hour there and drinking lots of coffee. Those things can add up if you purchase them elsewhere and the view can't be beat!

Actually, I'm in the lounge right now, having a lunch of Guinness Foreign Extra and nuts. I'm sure FA would approve...

Last week, I wound up at Tokyo Haneda (HND) Airport for a short hop to Sapporo via New Chitose Airport (CTS) for a few days. Besides reveling at the fact that HND is a MUCH nicer airport than NRT and that their observation deck has a snack bar, I found this travesty at the gates.

Yes, it's THAT jet...the ANA Pokemon Jet.

I shouldn't have said anything because that jet became MY jet for the 1.5 hour flight to CTS. Here's the obligatory close up of one of the most silliest liveries to grace a Boeing 747-400.

It shows that ANA has a sense of fun, since there is one other Pokemon jet in the fleet as well as a flying panda and a couple of Snoopy based jets as well. You want Kitty-Chan? You'll have to fly EVA for that one!

Inside, the head rests were covered by Pokemon covers but otherwise, it was standard ANA in the rest of the cabin. No cabin attendants dressed up as Pikachu. Service was pretty good for a short hop. Apparently, the HND/NRT-CTS route is one of the busiest in the world and the loads are so high that they regularly fly jumbos on this route. They also fly itty bitty CRJs on this route as well, which was my return flight into NRT. There's something not very nice about a plane where you can't even stand up straight in the aisle!

This route is also hella expensive unless you get the mega discount 8 weeks ahead fare and then it's close to 30000 yen. I got a round trip with two weeks advance for 22000 yen and got UA MP EQM for the flights on top of it. How? I purchased the ANA Skypass before I left the US. Info here (why should I type it when I can link it)?