walawala

My wife and I traveled for 15 days to Taipei, Phuket, and Tokyo for our honeymoon. Rather than spend the entire time on a beach, we opted mix things up a bit to avoid getting bored. The first leg of our trip was to Taiwan where we have family. We hosted a banquet to celebrate our wedding with our overseas relatives. The second leg of our trip was to Phuket, Thailand for some much-needed R&R. Finally, we flew to Tokyo to partake in good food and shopping.

I've divided the trip report into these parts.

Part 1 -- Overall Thoughts
Part 2 -- SFO-NRT-TPE (NH C)
Part 3 -- TPE-HKT (TG C)
Part 4 -- Trisara
Part 5 -- HKT-BKK-HND (TG C)
Part 6 -- Westin Tokyo
Part 7 -- Eating in Tokyo (Chateau de Joel Robuchon, Kondo, Butagumi, Sawada, Kaikaya, ManRyu, RyuGin, Blacows)
Part 8 -- NRT-SFO (NH C)

Part 1 -- Overall Thoughts

Ideally, we only get one honeymoon. We wanted to make the most of it without paying through the nose. That's how we got introduced to the world of credit card bonuses, etc. We wanted to travel in luxury and comfort, and for the most part, we were successful.

We booked our flights using United miles. In total, we redeemed 285,000 miles for our business class tickets. Earning the points was relatively easy. My wife and I signed up for Chase Sapphire Preferred cards which generated 80,000 miles. I also signed up for the United Explorer card which netted another 50,000 miles. I opened a Fidelity account w/ $100K to get another 50,000 miles. That got us the miles we needed. We booked an open jaw round-trip ticket which covered all legs except for HKT-HND, and booked a one-way ticket to cover the remaining leg. We also combined our *wood points and redeemed 90,000 points for a 5-night stay at the Westin on the club level. If you book 4 nights, the 5th is free. The club level costs an extra 2,500 points a night (5th night is also free), but it's well worth it because you get free daily breakfast, which costs 3,600 yen (~$40). In all, we spent just shy of $8K on our honeymoon, with the bulk of our out-of-pocket costs coming from Trisara ($5K) and eating in Tokyo ($2K).

I was really looking forward to flying in a premium cabin on an international flight because it's a relatively rare experience for me. While I travel a lot in the U.S and almost always get upgraded, I don't travel internationally as often and clients won't pay for the the C class ticket. I've only gotten upgrades on international flights in two instances and those were both relatively short flights. I have only flown once on ANA (in economy) and never on Thai. Based on what I've read here, I expected ANA to be significantly better than Thai, but I was really surprised by Thai. There were a lot of aspects of my Thai flights that I liked better than ANA!

I was also looking forward to Trisara as I'd never stayed at a five-star resort before. It wasn't a complete let down, but in some ways I was disappointed by our stay there. I've stayed at Four Seasons and Ritz Carltons in the U.S. when traveling for business, and I expected Trisara to be on a different level. Part of my disappointment might have been related to the weather -- we had 1 day of sun (the first day), followed by a lot of rain -- but I think I have legitimate issues too. I'll go into more detail in the Trisara post below.

Prior to booking at Trisara, we were actually planning on going to Amanpulo in the Philippines, but we had a lackluster experience with customer service. We booked our stay at Aman in September 2012 and promptly notified them of our flights in and out of Manila. They told us no problem. A few weeks later, they told us that we would not make the inbound charter flight due to their flight schedule so we could fly the day before or stay a day in Manila. We could not leave Taiwan earlier, so we opted to cut the five-day stay to four days. Seven months pass. We get another e-mail telling us we would have to change our plans yet again due to the schedule of the charter flights leaving Aman. We would have to spend another meaningless day in Manila cutting that five-day trip to a mere three days. The way the entire sequence of events unfolded really upset us, so we switched to Trisara, which is easily accessible from the Phuket airport.

This was my third trip to Japan. I thought the Westin Tokyo was fantastic. I've read about it needing renovations, being in an inconvenient location, etc., but all of these comments seemed unfounded. I was impressed with just about every aspect of the hotel. I was also largely impressed by the food in Tokyo. I did not enjoy RyuGin, however. It did not seem to deserve three Michelin stars.

The subsequent parts will include a lot of pictures!