though.

!1st

Thanks for that Alan. Thai Air has always been fine with me (as you say it
exceeds US carrier standards) and that would have been my choice because I
enjoy Bangkok, but they have either cut down on flights or are simply
completely booked on the days I want to travel because I can't get the seats
I need. Thanks to you and the people at the other ng I believe EVA will work
out nicely....and I do plan on looking at Taipei for a couple days.

Just for your info, from my experience...I think Malaysia Air falls right
between Thai Air/British Air and Singapore Air. It's price levels are right
between Thai and Singapore as well.

Again, thanks for your help.

I got to try them both on my trip to Thailand.  We flew on "Super Business
Class" tix LAX-TPE-BKK.  On the LAX-TPE leg, their website had screwed up
when e-ticketing us and didn't assign us seats.  When I remembered to call a
few months later, they insisted on assigning our seats for that leg at the
airport.  Having gone through this in the past with United, I figure that
means that they're overbooked and that we're screwed.  At LAX, however, they
did issue us boarding passes though not for two seats together.  At boarding
time, they told us to wait just past the gate to see if they could sit us
together.  We waited and waited and finally were invited up to the very
front, Row 1, of the upstairs 747 cabin.  Since business class was located
immediately behind class, the curtain was open, and there was no
differentiation in the seat or cabin appearance, I thought we were still in
business class.

It took me a while to realize that we had much more legroom.  EVA's business
class has only a 55" seat pitch, while their first class has 77" and the
seats get near horizontal.  I actually got some sleep on the way there.  We
didn't get bumped up on the way back and the guy in front of me kept his
seat fully reclined the entire 11 hours and I doubt I got a wink of sleep.

Otherwise, there's not much difference between the business class and the
first class seats to warrant the almost $5,000 difference in price.  The
wine selection is the same, the entertainment systems are the same, the
pillows and blankets are the same, and I actually preferred the business
class dining selections.  First class only offered a choice between
"western" and "non-western" where as business class had two western
offerings and one non-western.  We tried the "black-boned chicken soup" and
the shrimp-stuffed abalone off the non-western side.  The seafood dish was
really fishy and I swear that the soup contained a caterpillar as a 'spice'.
Other than the leg room and seat recline, the only real difference was the
nice leather-cased toiletry kit they gave us in first compared to the basic
stuff provided in business class - Janna really liked that.

In the Taipei airport, we were still on a roll.  The business class lounge
was full so they bumped us over to the first class "Laurel Garden", a little
oasis on the second floor of the atrium terminal with a nice view, complete
with piano player and decent food.

TPE-BKK was on one of their new Airbus A330-200s, where they only had two
classes.  The business class was similar to Continental's BusinessFirst
777s, with the latest in seat and entertainment system functionality and an
almost horizontal recline.  Unfortunately that flight was only 4 hours and
on the way back we instead flew one of their 757s which was disappointingly
similar to U.S. domestic business class.  The only good part about the
TPE-LAX leg was that it was 3 hours shorter than flying in the other
direction.  The service was pretty miserable as the flight attendants seem
to be the only ones on the plane that didn't speak English - a lot of the
passengers seemed to be students returning back to school - and my Ni Hao Ma
and Xie Xie only get me so far.

I will note that the Taipei airport prices its goods in dollars as well as
whatever funny money they use there.  Even in Myanmar, the almighty dollar
held sway, though the street urchins brought back my $5 that I handed them
for a bottle of Burmese hooch because it had a small pen mark in the upper
corner.  I swapped them for a cleaner one and away they went, even bringing
back my $2 change along with the bottle they delivered to the boat landing.
And the Burmese street urchins spoke much better English than the EVA flight
attendants.