Originally Posted by eponymous_coward

Why waste a day in transit when you're already going to be in Bali at the start of things? Do you really like the idea of flying on Indonesian puddle jumper flights that much?

I'd probably do AA portions of the trip as a (in effect) an open-jaw of USA-HKG-DPS//SUB-HKG-USA.

And as I mentioned, if you're willing to spend a relatively small amount of BA miles (12.5K in Y pp, AMEX has a MR->BA bonus right now), you could bake in a HKG stopover on the return by having BA handle the SUB-HKG segment. (You may also need to do this on your MCI-AA hub segment; I very much doubt there's an MCI-DPS AND SUB-MCI through fare; AA awards need a through fare to redeem an award. I think the easiest way to get around that is redeem 4.5K BA miles pp for MCI-ORD or vv.)

The other possibility is timing your flights such that you can get close to a full day in HKG. I've sort of done that on an upcoming AS redemption where I wanted more destinations than I could reasonably squeeze in one redemption:

SEA-SFO(AS)-HKG(CX) in F
a day in HKG
HKG-BKK on CX in C, BA redemption @ 15K miles (but in effect 10K AMEX MR because of a bonus )
day or two in BKK
a week in the Andaman coast of Thailand and Malaysia, I'll fly into Penang, Langkawi or Phuket, this is TBD
end up in Penang, fly back PEN-HKG(this is back on the AS CX F award)
overnight in HKG
HKG-SFO//OAK-SEA (yes, I actually have to take BART to OAK to fly home without a 7 hour layover in SFO )