See You Next Year Taipei!
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Airport….
Yesterday was my last day in Taipei so I checked out and took a hotel car to the airport. Everything seemed OK till I got to the ticket check in counter. My last day at the hotel was the June 14th, but for some reason, the ticket had a date of June 15th for the departure date despite the fact that my email had a June 14th departure. I remember that the travel agent was doing something with my flight to try to get me out of there on the same airline as my flights to and from Vancouver. I guess something got screwed up.
At any rate, I went on standby and things didn’t look good. All the flights were booked and it would seem that I would need to spend the night in Taoyuan Airport till my scheduled flight the next day at 4:40 PM. Luckily, EVA decided to add one more flight and I was on it 3 hrs later.
Only SUPER BUSINESS CLASS was available and they wanted $75 US for it. I thought, what the hell. I didn’t pay for the flight anyway. I might as well kick in to get there when I planned to so here I am being greeted by three stewardesses. I even have my own TV and a video game system. Heck, I even have a place to hang my hat.
The seats are like super recliners. They’re set inside buckets so you don’t bother the guy behind you when you recline and the leg room is almost limitless. I couldn’t even reach the other seat with my legs.
The seats had so many buttons and gadgets that I spent at least half the flight playing around with them. The seat had all sorts of trays and gadgets.
In Super Business Class, you get noise cancelling headphones made by Sennheiser, and not some cheap ass disposable stuff. Unfortunately, they used some really weird proprietary connector that I’d never seen before on an aircraft. Otherwise, I’d snag them and use them later.
I was surprised by the quality of the dining experience. They laid out table cloths, gave me fresh buns. They even gave me mini salt and pepper shakers instead of those horrid packets that rip and you end up with too much on your food. As for the food itself, it was probably some of the best airline food I’ve had in a while. The seafood wasn’t overcooked, the fruit was fresh, and the dessert was pretty good. I got all the juice and coffee I wanted.
Is Super Business Class worth the extra green? Well, if I didn’t have to be in Hong Kong that day, I probably wouldn’t have spent the cash. Also, because this is a pretty short 2 hr flight, all these extras were definitely overkill. However, if I could get myself into SUPER business class on the way back to Canada for cheap enough, I might just swing for it.
Next stop: Hong Kong!