So it’s holiday time again! Liv and I both work absolutely crazy hours, something like 130-140 hours a week easily so we’ve both been desperately in need of a break. Liv has also been pining to go back home to see her family, to do some shopping but just as importantly to see her relatives. So we’ve gone back to Taiwan.
The first and last time I visited Taiwan was in January 2009 and I absolutely fell in love with the country. When I was a child the only thing I knew about Taiwan was “Made in Taiwan” and I assumed it was just all factories. While there is a lot of manufacturing in Taiwan; HTC, Asus, Acer, etc etc, Taiwan is an incredibly beautiful country and the people there are absolutely lovely.
So on Friday 25th we flew from Edinburgh to London then from London Heathrow to Hong Kong then Hong Kong to Taipei.
We flew with BMI Baby from Edinburgh to London Heathrow and while they are the only domestic airline to fly from Edinburgh to London I wasn’t impressed. Firstly I tried booking tickets on their website a few weeks ago to be told this isn’t possible. I then called customer services and spoke to a rather unpleasant operator who said “We don’t operate between Edinburgh and London”. A few weeks ago BMI cancelled their service from Glasgow to Edinburgh (which is ridiculous) so in the end I had to go to a travel agent in Edinburgh and pay more money! Arkh!
Then when we got to the airport to check I was my usual chatty self and asked the check in agent if the flight was busy. She told me “we’ve overbooked by 13 seats”. Pardon my language but WTF! They said they were hoping people wouldn’t turn up but what happens if everyone turns up and there aren’t enough seats? If we were to miss our flight then most likely we couldn’t fly to Taiwan. NOT IMPRESSED!
Heathrow airport had it’s normal happy atmosphere (being sarcastic) but we flew with Cathay Pacific for the first time. I LOVE THEM! The food on the flight was tasty and the service really fast and polite. But the main thing for me was the seats. All I can say is awesome! I’m 6ft 4in tall (about 194cm), have very long legs and I weigh over 20 stone so 90% of flights for me are horrendous. Cathay Pacific’s long haul flights (I don’t know about the short haul flights) have seats that are basically a shell (I must point out we flew economy – we’re cheap!) which doesn’t lean backwards so I’m never crushed by the seat in front. There also seems to be a lot more legspace regardless of the shells and even when I slid the seat forward I still had a few inches of knee space left. There’s absolutely tonnes of room under the seats.
For any long haul flights to the Far East in the future I will, if the option is available, only fly Cathay Pacific. Absolutely awesome!
Just a note about the airports. Why can’t Heathrow improve their airport? It’s dark, dank and absolutely stinks. In contrast Hong Kong airport really impressed me. It’s really clean, really bright and has some really excellent but cheap food. Heathrow could learn a lot!
Note: There are no images of our journey from the UK to Taiwan (we only have pictures of the food we ate in Hong Kong) but I’ll take some photos on the return journey.
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