Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Hanoi to Denpasar (Bali) on Singapore Airlines Business Class

After three nights in Hanoi our time in Vietnam was over. Again we had the Hilton's car take us to the airport. This time our car was a Mercedes Benz. After about an hour drive to the airport we were dropped off at the international terminal. We had business class tickets on Singapore Airlines and I was very excited to be flying on their newest business class product on the A330-300, which is the smallest jet Singapore has in its fleet. This is a shot of our plane as it arrived from Singapore. 


The Hanoi airport is actually quite small for being a capital city. It is super old and decrepit. The business class lounge that Singapore uses is shared by many other airlines and it's pretty gross. It's right out of the 60s/70s and is barely air conditioned. The food on the buffet was gross and I think I only had coffee and water.  




We did a little bit of shopping in the terminal and headed to the gate. Since the terminal is small the gate area is quite tight. We boarded first with business class and found our seats right in the first row. 


The seats were amazing and super comfortable. They lie flat or just about flat, but I never put the seat in that position. The entertainment system on this plane was superb. Since the flight was about 3 hours long, I was able to watch an entire movie. I saw August Osage County.  The service was impeccable and I will never get used to flight attendants calling me by name. Singapore Airlines is such a class act.


Of course while the rest of the passengers boarded I was able to relax with my glass of champagne, which was free-flowing. 




The meal service was excellent too. There were 3 courses and this was the appetizer course consisting of a smoked salmon salad with bread and cracker.


The main dish was some kind of fish with even more garlic bread. The bread basket was flowing and so was the vino.


The dessert was a jackfruit cake, I think. It was some kind of tropical fruit cake followed by some really good coffee and chocolates.




After about 3 hours of flying we arrived into Singapore's Terminal 2. I was a little disappointed that we didn't arrive into the newest terminal, Terminal 3, which has the nicest and newest business class lounge. We made our way to the Silverkris Lounge in Terminal 2 for a very short layover. It was less than 2 hours long and we didn't have much time there. The lounge doesn't have any windows and it was actually quite dark, but still modern and nice. 


We had a long walk to the end of the terminal to our connecting flight to Bali. Our plane was an old 777-200 with very old recliner seats. I checked the registration and it's actually the same plane we flew a few years back from Bangkok to Singapore. This cabin was fairly empty in business class and the entertainment system was so old and terrible. Nothing was "on demand" as is pretty much the standard these days. The flight to Denpasar (Bali) was about 2 hours long and so the service was a little bit abbreviated too.




The meal was served all on one tray and didn't have the multiple courses like the previous flight did. They did have the same cracker bread, which was good. The service was perfect again and unfortunately the flight went by very quickly.


By the time we landed in Bali it was dark and I couldn't take any pictures of the brand new terminal building. 

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