Flight Home - First Class one last time!

So yesterday Derren and I arrived home safely after another long day of traveling. This will be my final blog for this long and amazing vacation, but I hope to be able to do more blogs of our vacations in the future!

Tuesday morning we woke up early at Derren's Uncle Chee Yeng's house in Kuala Lumpur and he drove us to KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport). It was quite interesting to fit the three of us plus all of this luggage in Uncle Chee Yeng's BMW. :) Luckily we were flying first class, so we were each allowed two check in bags up to 32kg (more than 60 pounds each!) This allowed us to bring back LOTS of stuff (especially lots of food and coffee!)

After a quick check-in (no line obviously since we are first class!) we headed over to the Cathay Pacific lounge in KLIA. They only have one first class/business lounge in KLIA and it definitely wasn't anything to write home about compared to the three amazing lounges in the Hong Kong airport (Hong Kong is Cathay Pacific's home base).

Here's a shot from across the airport of the lounge on the second story:

After spending some time in the lounge (where I hastily tried to complete the prior blog), we boarded our 3.5 hour flight from KL to Hong Kong. This was a business class flight since that particular aircraft doesn't have first class seating. We were served breakfast on this flight, and even though I still wasn't feeling particularly well, I was able to eat some of it. Here is the first "course" of breakfast - fresh fruit (this is mango, papaya, kiwi, and pineapple). You can also pick from a variety of pastries/breads (bread, muffin, or croissant) and many juices, coffee/tea, or alcohol if you so desire.

After the first course, you can pick from a variety of cereals or yogurt. And after that, the hot course. Derren had a Malay dish (unfortunately no picture!) with rice and meat, and I had what is seen below. It's an omelette with salsa inside, a small hashbrown, and a grilled tomato, mushrooms, and peas.

We landed safely in Hong Kong, had to go through security again (even though we were just transferring!), and had to basically run to the opposite end of the airport to board our first class flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Unfortunately our layover was so short that we weren't able to hang out in any of the lounges offerred! We definitely will plan for a longer layover on our next trip (although maybe not a 12 hour layover like on our original journey!)
So we boarded our flight, and were immediately provided with a glass of Krug champagne. We were given our pajamas and overnight amenity bags. And very shortly after, we took off! Here's a video I took of the Hong Kong take-off from my seat at the nose of the 747.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnD73b1Uljs&feature=youtu.be
And here's a picture of Hong Kong as we were leaving:

Soon after take-off it was time for our first meal. Here's the wine I tried and the warm nuts while we waited for them to set the table and get the meal ready.

I only have pictures of my food (Derren's is on his camera) unfortunately, so here you go! This is my appetizer - a quinoa vegetable thingy (I have no idea what it should be called). And a piece of bread. Derren had caviar and salmon and bread.

Here we are with our appetizers - you can see the black wad of caviar on his plate.

And then we both had a little of this soup - a leek and potato soup (not as good as the apple soup on our first flight!)

And we had some salad - lettuce with bell peppers and mozarella cheese.

My main dish was spinach and cheese tortellini with a sun dried tomato pesto sauce. Derren ate a piece of cod with white rice and choy sum (asian vegetables).

And for dessert, a warm hazelnut cake and chocolate ice cream with vanilla sauce.

Here we are with dessert. You can see that I'm not looking so hot - as mentioned, I still didn't feel well, and after trying to eat a bunch of this food, I was heading down...

About 5 hours later, Derren had a "snack" of noodle soup, and I had a sprite. I just asked for a sprite and they brought me a basket full of crackers and candy to go with it. Don't worry, I took it all with me. :)

And about 2 hours before landing is when the second meal is typically eaten. Derren ate by himself while watching a movie - he had fruit and dim sum. And soon before landing I decided I should probably eat at least a little bit of something, so I had a little bit of toast:

And one scrambled egg. They make eggs to order in first class - boiled, scrambled, or fried!

And after almost a 12 hour flight (it's about 2 hours shorter than from SFO to Hong Kong because of tail winds), we were descending into San Francisco. The Golden Gate bridge looked really awesome covered in fog:

Another shot of the beautiful Golden Gate, and a great symbol of our return to the USA!

 Derren and I had an amazing vacation, and I am so thankful to him for putting so much hard work and so many hours into all the planning for this once in a lifetime trip. He worked tirelessly to find deals and credit cards, etc to make this trip high class and SOOO cheap. Ridiculously cheap for what we got. Ge should give up pharmacy and be a deal seeker for a living - if only you made money doing that!
Thank you SOOO much Derren!!!!!

And thank you to you all who have followed us on our journey. I'm glad that I was able to maintain this blog to keep everybody posted with what we were up to on our travels through Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia. We look forward to hearing from everybody and seeing everyone soon!

Until our next journey,
Ashley & Derren