Introduction: A Quick Trip to Taipei

I wanted to go to Taipei, half to see the city and half to fly a couple of premium airline products that are new to me. I had an opportunity to do that recently with a quick trip to Taipei.

Getting There: EVA Air

I started off with EVA Airlines Royal Laurel Business Class from LAX-TPE. I didn’t get on the Hello Kitty flight, which frankly I was happy about. This flight was booked using a trick that is no longer possible to reproduce: LifeMiles to Guam. My official route was LAX-TPE-GUM for a total of 25K LifeMiles, but I simply “threw away” the TPE-GUM route and completed immigration at TPE. EVA’s Royal Laurel (Business) Class is excellent, and I highly recommend it for trips to Asia.

Staying at the Grand Hyatt Taipei

I stayed a few nights at the Grand Hyatt Taipei, which is somewhat famous for being a haunted hotel. I didn’t experience any ghastly ghouls during my stay here, but I did notice an oddity or two that made me wonder. The hotel has also recently undergone renovation (at least in some rooms), and I was luck to get one of the new rooms. I was very happy with my stay at this hotel for only 12K Hyatt points per night.

Getting Home: JAL via Tokyo

Just like that, my trip to Taipei was over. My return route was TPE-NRT-LAX, primarily because I wanted to try Japan Airlines’ new “Sky Suite” First Class product from NRT-LAX. The first leg was TPE-NRT in JAL’s regional Business Class, which was excellent, and after a quick stop at the underwhelming JAL First Class Lounge at NRT I was off to Los Angeles.

The JAL First Class Sky Suite on the 777 is fantastic. Availability is generally really hard to come by unless you can wait until the week before to plan your trip (which is what I did), but if you can, this seat is amazing. It doesn’t have a closing door, but it’s still very private. The seat was one of the most comfortable I’ve had, the pajamas are my favorite of all airline pajamas, and for the bedding you have a choice of firm or soft on the memory foam mattress pad. The food was also excellent. And did I mention the seat controls were basically a touch-screen remote that looked like an iPhone? I was extremely impressed on this flight and hope to fly it again soon.

I’ll be providing a lot more details in each of my posts!

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