Well, first let me clarify that China Airlines is the national airline of Taiwan, not China. It offers a lot of flight options from the west coast of USA/Canada to Southeast Asia. I chose this flight from Vancouver to Mumbai mainly due to the cost factor and also because it had a layover in Bangkok, where I wanted to halt for a day and see the city.
The ground staff at Vancouver airport was polite, though not very flexible. I had about 2 kgs extra luggage and they just wouldn’t allow me to check it in. Thankfully, I had a band of relatives at the airport to see me off(in true Indian tradition) and I managed to offload some stuff.
The plane was a 744, pretty spacious and from the look of it, not very old. It was extremely clean and didn’t smell of Chinese food(couldnt help that one... :)). I settled down comfortably and the flight took off on time.
Now to the part that all guys wait for in airline reviews - The hostesses. They were very pretty but all of them looked astonishingly alike! I mean, it was like they had all been cloned. Same height, same hairstyle, same expression...maybe the training academy really moulds them well. There was some communication problem though, because I needed a paper and pen and couldn’t get the hostess to understand English. I finally had to use some sign language and she got it.
The food onboard is awesome if you are a fan of southeast Asian cuisine. I never order special meals on board since I love trying out different stuff, even though it flops many times. We were served kanji, which is a sort of khichdi with seafood. It was excellent! The rest of the stuff was decent too, fried rice, chicken, etc.
For evening snacks, the hostesses were going around serving noodles in soup and they completely ignored all the non-Chinese looking people on board. My Indian neighbour, I and a few others did not get the privilege of tasting it. I wasn’t really hungry and did not bother to ask for one, but somebody did and he realized the problem as soon as they handed him the dish with chopsticks! Also informed him that no forks were available. I thanked my stars for not being hungry when I saw the poor guy slurping the soup and noodles right out of the bowl!
One warning to all travelers - this flight is extremely long, about 13 hrs non-stop between Vancouver and Taipei, so please stock up on reading material and music. I nearly died of claustrophobia along the way.
Before ending the review, I have to put in a word about the excellent hotel stay which is offered at Bangkok during the layover. The brochure in my room said - 2200 baht/night for the room that I was in. That felt good... :)