You may not know this, but I’m getting married in May. It will be a formal affair, so I needed to get a new tuxedo. I’ve got a Hong Kong tailor who comes to Chicago once a year and I buy a handful of shirts from him each visit. I was never really happy with the one suit I got from him though – it just didn’t fit right. I knew I couldn’t do a suit fitting from afar, so I decided that I’d fly to Hong Kong, bring my best man along and get us a couple custom tuxes. The problem? From Thanksgiving through mid-February, work is so hectic, I really can’t get away for very long. There is a sweet spot each January where I can usually escape for 2-3 days. I’ve used this golden time on the January calendar to visit Shanghai and Stockholm before.
We didn’t have much time, so we decided to leave on Wednesday and return on Sunday. We are fortunate enough to have a couple direct flights daily between ORD and HKG (UAL and Cathay). I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cash in American miles for Business or First on Cathay, or United Miles – then my best man (EAD) mentioned that he had four Global Premier Upgrades (GPU) expiring at the end of February. I did a quick check and found that our upgrade would clear immediately on the outbound, but we’d be wait listed for the return. I decided let’s go ahead and book a cash trip on United and apply these GPUs to move us from economy to BusinessFirst. I figured that about 17K EQMs would be a nice way to start off the year too.
I did forget a key issue with applying GPUs — they aren’t valid on all fare types. So the $890/person round trip in economy wouldn’t allow me to upgrade. The cheapest upgradable fares were $1,500 each. A total of 32 hours in the air for an additional $610/person (or $20 additional per person per hour — SOLD). I booked the tickets and our GPU cleared immediately into BusinessFirst. We were able to snag two seats together (United’s 777’s BusinessFirst cabin is in a 2-4-2 seating configuration) on the two seat side of the plane – unfortunately, our seats were backward facing. This doesn’t bother me at all and while in the air, I don’t even notice that I’m flying backwards. EAD has a mild motion sickness issue, so we were a bit concerned that this might be a rough flight for him.
Our trip was 16.5 hours to Hong Kong, 63 hours on the ground and then 15.5 hours back to Chicago. We had to be efficient, that’s for sure. Over the coming couple of weeks you’ll be able to read about the following aspects of our trip:
- UAL 895 ORD-HKG (BusinessFirst)
- Le Méridien Cyberport
- Victoria Peak
- L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon (Dinner)
- Temple of 10,000 Buddhas
- Hutong (Dinner)
- Street Markets and Food
- Hong Kong Tailors
- Transportation in Hong Kong
- Singapore SilverKris Lounge
- UAL 896 HKG-ORD (BusinessFirst)
Have you been to Hong Kong?