Spectrum of the Seas Review: Days 1 & 2 – Chicago to Kuala Lumpurfeatured

I know. I know. I hope it’s worth the wait (…at least a little).

Prologue

I have to be honest, I’m not even sure where to start this. I don’t remember why we decided that this year, we’d take a cruise through Asia. I don’t even remember if it was before or after we saw Crazy Rich Asians (which kind of sounds like a joke, but if you know us well enough, that’s exactly the kind of thing we get influenced by). Somehow, some way, we decided You know what? Let’s go on an Asia cruise this year. I had more why not’s than why’s. Why not Asia? We’ve exhausted most of the Caribbean, Mediterranean and Baltic ports of call. Royal Caribbean was launching a new cruise ship. So it just made sense. Why not Asia?

Asia was never at the top of my must visit list. It’s always been on my that’d be nice list, but the culture shock has always scared me a little bit. The language, the customs, everything…it’s all so different. At least, it seemed that way. But like I mentioned in the trip journal for my little jaunt through Eastern Europe, I’ve been in an if not now, when? phase for awhile now. We’ve done Europe cruises every spring for the past four years. We’re doing another two in the next year (when the Carnival Radiance and Mardi Gras go out to sea). Flights were not outlandishly expensive. Mom couldn’t go on this trip and she’s never particularly wanted to visit Asia anyways, so we just kind of did it. We booked it, and we spent almost a year planning it.

Every day, every detail, we poured over them. I have Google Maps for all of the cities we visited and they had no less than 50 places held in them each. Points of interest. Cafes and coffee shops. Photo spots. I lived and breathed this trip for months and months and months. If there was a vlog, I watched it. If there was a book, I read it. If there was an Instagram post, I saved it. You don’t go that far and just wing it, you know?

As the trip got closer and particularly in the days leading up to our departure, I was riddled with anxiety. I’m a naturally anxious person to begin with, but the fear of the unknown, stepping into this other world, so different from everything we’ve known and learned, so far away from home, it was terrifying. But you know what? I felt the same way before we left for the Baltics and Russia a couple of years ago. I felt the same way when we flew to Barcelona for that very first Mediterranean cruise. And all I could hope was that for all of the anxiety running through me, for all that was scaring me, the places I’d see and the memories I’d make would be all the greater.

Getting There

Flights to Asia had been trending down in price for the past two years, which was part of the appeal of traveling there now. I feel like I see a flight alert to somewhere in Asia every other day, and once we decided where our pre-cruise trip would start (Kuala Lumpur, naturally because we saw a picture of the Batu Caves on Instagram), we started researching our options.

Regardless of where in Asia we started, we knew that getting there would take at least twice as long as the longest flight we’ve ever been on and we really didn’t want to fly coach for that long. We usually stay loyal to American and the oneworld alliance, but we were willing to step out this time. And just as we were about to hack a Premium Economy fare on Singapore Airlines from JFK to Singapore (the world’s longest non-stop flight!), we found a better fare on American to try their Premium Economy product. We booked our flights in separate segments because it just ended up being cheaper that way, so we ended up booking one segment that went Chicago to Dallas to Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur, one segment that went from Shanghai to LAX (our cruise would end in Shanghai, and it was cheaper to fly to LAX and book a separate flight home to Chicago than it was to fly from Shanghai to Chicago with a layover at LAX) and a segment that took us home from LAX. We also had to get from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, so we booked a flight on Singapore Airlines for that leg. It’s a lot of flights to keep track of, and if the price difference wasn’t so significant, I would have just ate the extra dollars for the convenience of having everything in one record locator or reservation.

I started stalking the weather forecast out of Chicago religiously ten days before we left. About five days before we left, the forecast started calling for massive thunderstorms and hailstorms the evening we were scheduled to leave. We had a little leeway in our schedule for delays with longer layovers in Dallas (ten hours) and Hong Kong (four hours), but very little for cancellations – we were on the last flight of the day out to Dallas, and our flight to Hong Kong was the only direct one on American that day. If we missed that, we’d miss our connection to Malaysia and since we were booked on the last flight of the day from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur, we’d end up losing a day in Malaysia. That’s a lot of words to say that there were a lot of places where this could go wrong and the forecast did not inspire a ton of optimism.

Stephanie likes to remind me that I can’t control the weather and I’ve just got to roll with it. For the life of me, I just don’t know how. I was cross-checking The Weather Channel with Accuweather, weather.gov and Weather Bug throughout the day. I couldn’t change the weather, but I could anticipate it. One of my coworkers was also traveling that day and took an extra half day to get out on an earlier flight. As the forecast got less drastic, we decided not to fly out early and to just cross our fingers and hope the storms stayed to the south.

Our flight to Dallas wasn’t leaving until after 10:00 PM, so I went to work like it was any other day. Any other day that ended with me hopping on a train, going to Mom’s house in the suburbs and hopping on an airplane to fly halfway across the world. You know. No big deal. Except it was the biggest of deals and much like every other big trip I’ve taken to this point, I didn’t really know how to anticipate it so I just wallowed in my own anxiety.  

Mom and Stephanie picked me up at the train station (with a Superdawg hot dog waiting since they knew I didn’t want to have airport food for dinner – we are Chicago girls through and through!) and we headed back to Mom’s house so Stephanie and I could do one last comb through our luggage to make sure we had everything we needed and one last check to eliminate anything we didn’t.

We packed up the car and headed to O’Hare, giving Mom one last big squeeze before heading off to check in. Here’s something we didn’t know: while we didn’t need a visa to enter Malaysia, we did need to show proof of onward travel plans (basically, we had to prove, in the words of our check-in agent, that we weren’t going to Malaysia to become homeless people and use up public resources. We could go in as long as we could prove we had intention to leave). If we had booked a roundtrip flight, this wouldn’t have been an issue, as the return flight would have already been attached to the record locator. Since we booked our outbound and return flights to and from Asia separately, though, we needed to show proof of return. The agent was super nice and helpful, and even though our digital records sufficed, she advised us that we should print everything and anything that had our travel plans on them so we’d have an easier time going through immigration later on.

From there, we breezed through security and headed off to our gate. The storms had dissipated and the inbound flight came in on time. When we boarded our flight right-on-the-dot on time, I couldn’t believe it – for all of the worrying I’d done, for all of the forecasts of major storms, this was actually happening.

Our plane pulled back from the gate right on time, but after a minute or two, I realized we weren’t taxiing to the runway – we were heading for a remote holding area. I’ve been through this enough times to know what was happening and enough times to know we weren’t out of the woods yet. Just as soon as I realized what was happening, the pilot came on the PA – flights to the North, East and West were cleared for takeoff, but a string of severe thunderstorms stretching from Lake Erie all the way back to Nebraska were blocking clearance for any flights taking off to the south. Flights like ours.

We sat on the tarmac in the remote holding area for about an hour. I was convinced that they were going to bring us back to the gate and cancel the flight – the storms were slow moving and they wouldn’t clear our flight path until 4:00 AM – well after the pilots and flight attendants were likely to run out of working hours. In a moment of divine intervention, though, our flight was prioritized ahead of all of the others also waiting and air traffic control had approved an alternative route for us that would divert us west around the storms before heading back southeast. It added an extra hour to our flight, but I didn’t even care. It was the greatest relief.

There was a spectacular light show of thunderstorms out my window, but I only enjoyed them for a few moments – I slept just about the entire flight and woke up as we were beginning our approach into Dallas, just before 2:00 AM.

Our connecting flight wasn’t until 10:30 the next morning, so we had booked a room at the nearby Hyatt Regency instead of staying overnight in the airport. We’ve been there, we’ve done that, we likely won’t spend long overnight layovers in airports ever again – it’s just so much more comfortable to have a room to rest in (ed note: famous last words when you take forever to post something you wrote months ago – I overnighted at the airport in Barcelona on a layover in October. Still do not recommend. Will not do again…until the next time I do). Our luggage was going straight through to Malaysia, so Stephanie texted the hotel, who sent a shuttle to pick us up at arrivals.

The hotel was unremarkable – the room was a little worn, but the public areas were nicely renovated. I probably wouldn’t stay there for anything longer than a layover, but it served its purpose. The beds were comfortable, the air conditioning was perfectly frigid and we got as good of a sleep as four hours would allow.

The next morning, we were up around 6:30 AM, quickly re-packed our carry-on bags and promptly checked out. We waited about ten minutes for a shuttle to take us to the D terminal, where we sailed through security (thanks again, TSA Pre-Check!) and bee-lined to the Centurion Lounge.

I’m kind of new-ish to the lounge thing. I’ve visited a few Admirals Club lounges when I’ve flown first class internationally, but I got this offer for 100,000 points if I opened an American Express Platinum card and hit the minimum spend over the winter and with all the travel we had planned, it was a no-brainer. With the Amex, I also got access to a network of Centurion Lounges. They aren’t in every airport (like my home airport of ORD), but they are in the ones I frequent the most (read: NYC, Miami and Seattle). Dallas has one, too, so we figured if we got an early start to the airport, we could have a relaxing breakfast and get our flight confirmations printed in case they asked for them in Malaysia.

The lounge offered spa services (which we declined this time, but I’ve had a mani there before and it was great!), showers (also declined but available) and a full bar (fully accepted this one), as well as an expansive breakfast spread with all kinds of goodies. My fave was the sweet corn muffins with a little shmear of maple butter. SO good.

We spent as much time as we could in the lounge before heading off to our gate to board American Airline’s longest non-stop flight. We were hoping for an upgrade and it looked good a few weeks before our flight (29 open seats in business class and a wide open first class!!), but as the flight approached and upgrades cleared, our names weren’t the ones with the check marks next to them. We’d survive, though – we were booked in Premium Economy, which we hoped would provide an extra dose of comfort for the extra long flight.

So here’s the thing: Stephanie and I both have mixed feelings about the flight. First, no way we would have survived in coach. Even on our best days, even if Mom were with us to fill out the row, a 3-4-3 ten-across economy looked absolutely miserable (whereas our Premium Economy cabin was eight across, with wider seats and much more generous pitch). We had a bag of goodies waiting for us on our seats – an amenity kit that was surprisingly well-stocked, a luxe Casper pillow and blanket and even a pair of slippers. We had a printed menu listing out our options, two hot meals and a snack. The food was tasty and fine. We had plenty of booze to dull the flight anxiety. The seat was comfortable enough (similar to a domestic first class seat but a little less plush). It wasn’t terrible from a hard product standpoint.

Here’s what didn’t go well: one, American’s movie selection seemed more limited than usual. I watched parts of Bohemian Rhapsody at least three times. The flight crawled at a pace that I’m not used to because usually, we get on a flight and it’s like warping forward in a magic time machine that drops us on another continent. This one, I felt every single second. We were bored, we couldn’t sleep and the flight attendants were non-existent. If it wasn’t a meal time, they weren’t in the cabin, and if we wanted a drink or needed anything, we either needed to call them or seek them out. And that would have been fine if the flight wasn’t sixteen and a half hours long. I’ve had domestic flights to Seattle that are a quarter of the distance and get more frequent beverage service. The meal services were poorly paced – we had a meal not long after we left Dallas and then our snack (a small pizza pocket with a cup of ice cream) wasn’t until seven hours later. We were famished at that point, and they didn’t set up the snacks and drinks they usually put out in the galley until after that snack service. Breakfast was served about an hour out from Hong Kong, a choice between Dim Sum and an American Breakfast, and service was slow by some confused flight attendants, which meant we were kind of rushed through it as we began our descent early.

The most difficult part of this flight, though, was the sheer forces that exert on your body when you’re flying and sitting in one position for hours on end. We had tons of space and leg room and an adjustable foot rest that kept our legs decently elevated and I walked off that plane feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. I was sore and stiff and I would have swelled out of my shoes if I wasn’t wearing an intense combo of compression socks under compression leggings.

Despite a late start (you guessed it — another tarmac delay!), our flight touched down in Hong Kong nearly 45 minutes early. We left Dallas at 11:30 AM on a Friday and we were wheels down in Hong Kong at 3:30 PM the next day (which was really the early morning hours in Dallas time).

We didn’t have to pass through immigration because we were transferring onto another flight, but we did have to find a transfer desk to get our boarding passes (the agent in Chicago couldn’t give them to us, which is not uncommon) and re-clear security. It was easy enough once we figured out what we were doing. The most confusing part was that in Hong Kong, there’s three different transfer desks, each serving different airlines and each located in vastly different parts of the terminal. We had to take a tram and several escalators and moving walkways to find the one that served Cathay Dragon, the carrier that would take us to Kuala Lumpur.

The airport in Hong Kong reminded me a lot of Heathrow. Tons of shopping. Tons of food. Floor to ceiling windows and a frenetic hustle and bustle. We headed to another tram that took us to the part of the airport where we could find the Centurion Lounge, where we could relax before our final flight.

The Centurion Lounge in Hong Kong felt much smaller than the one in Dallas, but was still packed with plenty of amenities – all kinds of seating, a hot food bar with fresh dim sum (the chicken pasties were ridiculously delicious), ice cream, a bar serving craft cocktails, spa-like bathrooms offering plenty of privacy, showers, working spaces – it was the perfect space to recharge for a few hours.

We wanted to leave ourselves with enough time to look around the airport and find our gate (HKG is HUGEEEEEEEE!), so we left the lounge about an hour before our flight was scheduled to board. Walking around the airport was something else. The amount of ambient light and windows looking out to the mountains beyond the tarmac, the fresh flowers and plants throughout the terminal and even the authentic dim sum places they offer in the airport – it was an experience for sure – one that I very much enjoyed.

Our last flight of the day was on Cathay Dragon, the regional carrier of Cathay Pacific, which is one of American Airline’s oneworld partners (and one of the top rated airlines in the entire world!). Even though our flight was a relatively short one, it was on a huge Airbus 330, with eight across seating in a 2x4x2 arrangement.

Neither of our boarding passes had a boarding group number, which I found vaguely confusing. The way they board on Cathay Dragon is by cabin, not by group number, so there were queues set up for First/Business Class, Marco Polo Club Elite Members and Economy Class. Even with my American status, we fell into the latter, but it wasn’t an issue – this big huge plane was only carrying maybe 50 people on the four-hour jaunt from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur.

Our flight took off right on time and a flight attendant was quick to confirm my special order (I put in a request for a vegetarian meal so I wouldn’t end up with seafood or duck or anything else that falls on the lengthy list of foods I won’t eat) and service started as soon as we were in the air.

My meal was a delicious vegetable manicotti in a rich béchamel sauce. It was accompanied by a salad of questionable vegetables, a cake square that looked delicious but literally had zero flavor and some crackers. Stephanie was offered a choice between chicken with rice or fish with potatoes and she went with the chicken. She was the winner between the two of us – everything on her plate from her salad to her chicken to the Hagen Daaz ice cream and cookies was delicious. Another flight attendant came through offering a full cart of beverage options, but we both stuck with water because any more booze and I’d be knocked flat on my butt and anymore Diet Coke and Stephanie would fuel the plane on caffeine shakes.

Unlike our earlier flight on American, the in flight entertainment on Cathay Dragon offered a ton more options (which was bizarre because it’s an Asian carrier and had better American movies than, you know, American Airlines). I put on I Feel Pretty and promptly passed out for the remainder of the flight. I was falling asleep standing up in Hong Kong and quickly approaching the phase of exhaustion where I start hallucinating, and Stephanie wasn’t faring much better. I think we both got two or three hours in on the plane and it really did a world of difference for us.

We landed in Kuala Lumpur about a half hour early, a blessing because we had been traveling for the better part of three days at that point. The airport at KUL was bigger and far more modern than I had been expecting, and I made note of the shopping for our return a few days later.

Immigration and baggage claim were a tram ride away (a growing theme in these Asian airports we were starting to familiarize with!), but even at midnight, there were no less than a dozen immigration agents on duty and we quickly cleared our way through, got our passports stamped, found our luggage, got them x-rayed at customs and made our way to the arrivals hall.

There are a bunch of options to get to the city center from the airport (which I didn’t realize is about an hour away, even without traffic). Because it was the middle of the night, we narrowed down to a taxi or Grab, Malaysia’s version of Uber (well, technically it is Uber – Grab acquired Uber a year or two ago). We went with Grab because we got swindled by a taxi driver in Paris and Grab felt like a better option. It was super easy to request a ride and find our driver and to get from the airport to our hotel in downtown KL in the equivalent of an Uber XL was just about an hour ride and 115 Ringitts (~$27 USD).

We were warmly welcomed by the staff at the Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur, who took care of our bags, checked us in quickly and walked us through the amenities that came with our room. The hotel was stunning, with crystal chandeliers and soothing neutral tones and while our room was on the smaller side, the small touches were incredible: a box of truffles on the bed, a pair of slippers set out for both of us, bottled water (as well as a selection of artisan flavored waters), every bath amenity you could think of, and even a bouquet of fresh flowers with a note thanking us for choosing the Mandarin Oriental!

Since we got some sleep on the plane, neither of us were particularly exhausted so we settled in a bit to plan out our day and I hopped into the sunken marble bath tub and ended a very long day soaking away three days of plane rides out of my very sore muscles.