HKIA

I hadn't gone to Hong Kong in years - and had flown in to Kai Tak airport then, so this was my first time at HKIA. Reminded me of Beijing Terminal 3 and the new Shanghai Hongqiao terminal - with the ramped entrance.

Since I was on the last leg of my KF Gold (which is now pretty much lost for good), I decided to venture into the SilverKris lounge to make the most of it. Unfortunately, thanks to a crazily huge dinner at Guangdong BBQ, I couldn't eat anything at all.

And then I saw this, and there was hope!

It was just what I needed to prepare me for the 15 hour flight to SFO.

SIN-LHR & back on Singapore Airlines

The husband and I flew to London a couple of weeks ago on Singapore Airlines. I never realised this until I got lounge access - that getting to an airport early or having a flight delay usually causes stress because drinks/food are expensive or because there are limited entertainment options. The stress is instantly eliminated once you realise that free food/drinks/magazines are totally within your reach.

I've passed through the KF Gold Lounge at T3 so many times over the past 3 years but have never really stopped to photograph it - it's normally super packed with people at 8am. At 11am, we were practically the only ones in there.

Our private lounge.

The food, unfortunately, is usually never very exciting. They normally have porridge, chwee kuay, har kau and siew mai in the morning, or omelettes and baked beans. There's the usual array of cold sandwiches and cup noodles too.

They also had tomato soup, which was pretty decent.

Enroute to the boarding gate, my husband asked: "what if someone walks to the end of the building, and when questioned, says that he's looking for the A380 boarding gate?" (*groan)

On the way back at Heathrow, it was the most amazing feeling as we breezed through our check in within 3 minutes - waiting in the economy class check in queue would have taken us at least 30 mins. Never mind the extremely haughty Singapore Airlines staff at the line asking us in the most condescending manner (imagine this said in a pseudo British accent by an older Asian lady): "Business Class?" Dressed in our inflight best of tshirts, jeans and sneakers, we were lost for words - in my naivety, I definitely wasn't expecting this level of arrogance from SQ staff, a foreigner, employed in this service job courtesy of my government and my air ticket expenses?! I could only mutter: "erm, Gold?" after which she dismissed us towards the counter with an imperious wave of her hand. Sigh.

Fortunately the people at the lounge were much nicer to us. There was this funky water wall and model of an A380 to greet us. Erm. Very 1990s.

The spread was quite interesting. In addition to the breads and cereals, there was also hot food (a really good grilled panini, which I forgot to photograph), as well as baked beans and scrambled eggs.

I was craving Chinese food. So happy to see chicken porridge on the menu!

They had some rather interesting yogurts.

And a pretty good array of cheeses.

I decided to try the yogurt with muesli.

Wasn't too bad at all.

This was pretty much most of the spread.

Now to the inflight food - I've complained previously about the SIN-PKG routes where they serve really crap food. But either they've improved the SATS kitchen, or they just torture those going to China. We actually had very decent food on board.

We had a cut of beef for lunch on the way to London.

This was a seafood pasta salad - surprisingly refreshing.

The beef was tender, and the gravy was actually not too salty. I was pleasantly surprised.

Before landing, they served a hot cheesy pasta.

On the flight back from London, they had beef rendang on board.

The rendang mixture was actually rather authentic.

The husband had a chicken with roasted vegetables that he enjoyed as well.

On hindsight I think the food wasn't all that brilliant after all - just that it surpassed my expectations :)

Lufthansa Lounge, Frankfurt Airport

After my 12 hours in Frankfurt city, I decided to head to the airport earlier to get some (free) food from the lounge before my red eye flight back to Singapore. Like every good Asian, I was starting to miss rice and noodles after a week in Portugal. So I was most pleased to see that they were serving chicken noodle soup in the lounge. It even came with chilli padi and coriander leaves on the side! It was so good (well, objectively speaking I have had much better noodle soup) that I had 2 bowls.

After I had satiated the noodle craving, I moved on to more traditional German fare.

I shall miss my Krisflyer Gold status dearly : (

Lufthansa - thumbs up!

I've only flown Lufthansa once during a work trip 3 years ago between Frankfurt and Stockholm, and have never thought much of the food nor service. This time, when I was flying between Porto and Frankfurt, I was pleasantly surprised by (1) being upgraded, and (2) by the excellent food on board.

This was breakfast: a cold platter of ham and cheese, a Portugese egg tart and a hot breakfast.

The hot breakfast had something similar to a vegetarian lasagne and a grilled steak. A bit odd at 7am, but it was still pretty yummy with the meat nice and tender.

What got me slightly disappointed was the realisation that despite having flown on Singapore Airlines almost once a month - sometimes twice - for the past 3 years, I have not been upgraded a single time despite earning literally hundreds of thousands of miles. It's sad that other Star Alliance carriers treat Krisflyer members better than SQ does : (

Lounge food

I was going out one night on the red eye to Beijing via SQ 2 months ago. If there's one food smell I can't stand, it's the rancid smell of sausages and omelette wafting through the cabin at 4am when you're bleary eyed with a sore back.

The SQ KF Gold lounge had pretty good leek and potato food - just the right comfort food before settling in for the night : )

Air China from Shanghai to Tianjin

I returned to Tianjin from Shanghai via Air China, and was scheduled on an 8.20pm flight. By the time I made it to Hongqiao it was 7.15pm and all the dinner grub in the lounge was almost gone.

This was my first pick: Spicy beef noodles - it looked rather promising


...but turned out to be terribly disappointing.

So I gave up halfway and decided to go for the remainder of the dinner. There was only porridge and pickles left by this time.

Fortunately the inflight food was not too bad...this 烧饼 was pretty yummy. I also had the Wang Lao Ji herbal tea, which was quite nice.

Sin-Beijing on SQ802

The oriental selection of chicken with fried rice on the morning SQ flight to Beijing was really terrible. The starter of prawns on salad was tasteless and unappetising. The chicken was plain bad. The rice was limp and lifeless.

Why does airline food have to be so bad? : (

One thing to be grateful for is SQ changing their inflight safety video though. At least the new one is quite tuneless.

Feeding on Qantas

I had an aisle seat on my outbound flight to Adelaide. This puzzled me when the flight attendant said he would go back into the galley to get me a serve of the beef meal, but never reappeared after that. Only after some more diligent attendant started serving tea and coffee, and realised that I hadn't been served, did I get my meal, and even then, they were already out of the other option.

The Thai-style papaya salad was insipid and salty, and the beef was tough, stringy and chewy. I gave up after 2 bites, and felt upset and disappointed that I even had to ask for the meal. I take back what I said previously said about Qantas in-flight food, because honestly, it was just as bad as whatever Singapore Airlines dishes up. The only saving grace was the bottle of wine.

Air China from Shanghai to Tianjin

Finally something worse than Singapore Airline's SIN-PKG fare...this seafood noodles on Air China domestic was basically gooey artificial crab meat on pasta. Very nasty.

(Didn't help that my in-flight reading material was the chapter from Julie and Julia revolving around boeuf bourguignon)

Airplane Food

Because of my frequent travels to China, I'm fairly familiar with the Singapore Airlines economy class menu which doesn't seem to change at all. It's either chicken/fish with potatoes, or chicken/pork with rice. After eating it twice a month (to China and back) for the past one and a half years, it has become a fearful thing.

So presenting the good, the bad and the ugly.

Starting with the ugly. This was the breakfast at the Krisflyer lounge in the morning: seafood congee with soya bean milk. Ugly doesn't mean bad....it was actually quite yummy. Just that it's hard for congee to look pretty. But this was yummy. They put dried scallop in the porridge which added a nice flavour.

The bad. I made the mistake of choosing the oriental selection on the flight out of Singapore.

The menu described this as "braised 5 spices soya sauce chicken, seasonal vegetables and fried rice". What came out was an undescribable brown liquid over some meat (everything looks like chicken right), rice with egg and pathetically limp vegetables. The starter of cold poultry (not sure if it was duck or chicken or some other edible bird) was tough and gamey. I gave up on the entire meal after 3 bites.

The only edible thing was the bun.

And finally, the best meal on board Singapore Airlines these days. The GOOD. I decided to learn from my mistakes on the return trip back to Singapore. Good ol' instant noodles never fail you!