I am in the process of planning an award ticket using CO miles (10 segments, 1 stopover, 1 open-jaw). I will know my final travel dates in late May but I'm going to book on 6/15 when the redemption prices drop.

My itinerary will be North America to somewhere in Asia (this part isn't decided yet) via Europe. I will most likely be using LH IAH-FRA for both TATL segments.

I need to fly IAH-FRA-Asia-HEL on or around 8/20 arriving in HEL by 9/2. After a stopover in HEL, I will return HEL-IAH in mid-December.

There aren't any non-stop *A flights Asia-HEL so I will need to make connections through LHR, FRA, CPH, etc.

This leaves me with several options for Asia. I want to try OZ F so I will need to fly through ICN. The FRA-ICN flight would work well. I would also like to use all 10 segments and book as many 23-hour layovers as possible.

The itinerary would look something like:

1. IAH-FRA
2. FRA-ICN
3. ICN-Asia
4. Asia-Asia
5. Asia-Asia
6. Asia-Asia
7. Asia-Europe
8. Europe-HEL
9. HEL-FRA
10. FRA-IAH

The Europe-HEL-Europe segments are on 1/2 cabin aircraft so I would have no problem purchasing a revenue ticket and using the 2 segments for extra flights within Asia.

Now I just need to choose a destination! I have never been to Seoul so I could use it as my destination and feel like I got a good redemption value. If I open-jaw, I can essentially choose two destinations as long as I pay for a revenue flight between them. Does anyone have suggestions for good August destinations? I have a Chinese visa but just visited PEK and PVG a month ago. I would love to visit more rural areas of China or even possibly Mongolia but I wouldn't have time to venture far from ULN (these flights wouldn't be in 3-cabin F but the Y tickets are so expensive that I could justify using award segments). SIN, HKG, and BKK would be good connecting points but I don't want to spend more than 24 hours there (again, I just went there a few months ago). This leaves Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, or somewhere in Thailand other than BKK. I enjoy a variety of indoor and outdoor activities so I can have fun almost anywhere!

I'm not too worried about award availability at this time - just the routing. Once I have a routing in mind I can tweak connections as needed. I would prefer to get FRA-ICN (OZ) and NRT-FRA/LHR (NH) or reverse in there somewhere but it isn't a 100% requirement. Alternatives would be any LX flight on the A333 or any TG flight on the 9W 77W. Also, any chance to get on one of SQ's remaining 744s is a plus.

For a point of reference, I flew IAH-FRA-NRT-SIN-BKK-HKG-IST-ZRH-ORD-IAH on an award ticket in December/January on LH/NH/SQ/TG/TK/LX F and SQ/LX J. FTers were very helpful with that itinerary so I challenge you to help me create something even better!

Thoughts? Asian *A routings/equipment aren't my area of expertise so I would really appreciate comparisons of service and equipment within Asia.