Day 1 (Part 1): Singapore - Hong Kong

Opening note: It's been a long time since I've blogged!~ Am posting up my itinerary as well as travel thoughts as requested and will be backdating the posts to reflect the dates. Will also be putting in as much details as I can recall or find on the net, particularly for all the food places that my friends have been bugging me for. I've also added a 5 star rating system for food and attractions, just so I can remember at the end of the day which places turned out to be worth going. Okay let's get down to things then!~

Edit: Decided to break up the day long posts into much shorter and readable parts.

For Day 1 (Part 2): Narita - New Chitose - Sapporo, please click here.

For Day 2, please click here.

Leaving Singapore

Departing Singapore on Cathay Pacific!~

Ultimately chose to take Cathay Pacific as I wanted to do a brief stopover at Hong Kong to meet my friends there as well. As such, the airfare was not the cheapest, ended up paying close to 800 bucks for SIN-HKG-NRT. The red-eye flight was supposed to depart at 1.20am but I soon learnt that Cathay Pacific wasn't exactly well know for their punctuality.

Quite the late boarding.

 Boarded at 1.20am, and we pushed back and took off at around 1.50am. The horrible thing about Cathay Pacific is that the ground staff never did apologise for the delay even once, and only droned "We're boarding in another 10 minutes" for a number of times before we are allowed to get on. My domestic flight with ANA later will also be delayed, but the experience will be vastly different.

CX meal box? (sweat)

Another thing I dislike about Cathay Pacific is the lack of hot meals for their red-eye flights. Even SilkAir, which is somewhat less full service carrier than Cathay Pacific, gave a choice between chicken and fish on my most recent red-eye working trip to India. Also, the stewardesses only went on two rounds to serve us beverages during the entire 4 hour flight. So far, not an auspicious start for my holidays.

Transiting at Hong Kong International Airport

Didn't have a good night's rest, pardon the shakiness.

Touched down at Hong Kong at around 5.30am and not many food places were open yet. Since my next flight to Narita is only at 9.10am, I figured out I could maybe explore the airport a bit (and shun bian find out why it's ranked so highly behind Changi and Incheon for my work) but nope, everywhere's closed. Even the DFS.

Ham macaroni and tomato sauce chicken cutlet combo breakfast @ Cafe de Coral
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Buttered bun with condensed milk and milk tea set @ Tsui Wah
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

I think I dozed off a bit waiting for the stalls to open and was abruptly awakened by whatsapp messages from Munting at around 7.30am. Had my first breakfast of my holiday and we ordered from Cafe de Coral and Tsui Wah. I can see why Tsui Wah had a queue. The macaroni was tasteless, the cutlet had a chemical odour to it. In contrast, the buttered bun turned out much better but it was quite normal in taste, just condensed milk on grilled bun. Must thank Munting for coming so early to meet up as we totally could not arrange to meet when I'm in Hong Kong proper later on, must be the first time she had been so punctual to report to work at Dragonair hahaha.

Prawn chee cheong fun @ Chen Fu Ji (陳福記)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Parted ways with Munting at around 8.30am to board my flight, only to be informed that there will be further delays. So decided to head nearby for more food (half a bun and that horrible macaroni wasn't filling at all). The chee cheong fun was actually very well done and the prawn servings were very generous, but there's this strange chao tah aftertaste to the whole dish which is why I didn't rate it as highly.

Was surprised that Cathay Pacific was using the Dreamliners for the HKG-NRT flights... they must have a lot of passengers flying on the route.

Turned out I didn't need to rush back at all, we boarded at 9.10am. So far, Cathay Pacific seems to be confusing their pushback timing with boarding timing.

Sweet and sour fish on board Cathay Pacific
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Never really was a huge fan of airline food, especially with my increased contact with it since I started work. This would have been passable if the bread did not turn out to be like play-doh.

Would the sakuras have already blossomed and withered? Find out in Part 2 here!